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THE ONEOTA 



MEDICINE 

IN THE 

FOREST 



W1LLARD E. YAGER. 



Whatever withdraws us from the power of the senses; 
whatever makes the past, the distant or the future preaomi- 
nate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking 
beings. 

— Webster. 



ONEONTA, N. Y. 

1 9 1 i 



Copyrighted 1911 by 
Willard E. Yager. 



ONEONIA HERALD 
PUB. CO. 



©CI.A286072 



in 

i 

Contents, 

3d 

Section I. — Of Succor in the Wilderness and the 

Need Thereof IS 

Section II. — Red Anatomy, Physiology and na- 
tional Etiology 22 

Section III. — Of Supernatural Diagnosis 29 

Section IV. — Of Medicines 36 

Section V. — Rational Agencies Other than Medi- 
cines -4-4 

Section VI. — Magic Healing and Healers 58 

Section VII. — Of the Profession, the Care of the 

Sick, the Beginning of Medicine 78 



t 



1 



1 



Abbreviations. 



Antiq. — Antiquities of the Southern Indians. Charles 

C. Jones jr. New York, 1873. 
Barb. — Historical Collections of the State of New 

York. J ohn W. Barber and Henrv Howe. New 

York, 1845. 

Beau. Na. — Indian Names in New York. Win. 
Beauchamp. Fayetteville, X. Y., 1893. 

Beau. Pol. — Polished Stone Articles used by the New 
York Aborigines. Wm. M. Beauchamp. Al- 
bany, 1897. 

Beau. Wd. — Aboriginal Use of Wood in New York. 

Wm. M. Beauchamp. Albany, 1905. 
Bloomf. — The Oneidas. J. K. Bloomfield. New York, 

1909. 

Br. — Radices Verborum Iroquaeorum. James Bruvas, 
S. J. New York, 1862. 

Brain. — Memoirs of the Rev. David Brainerd. Jona- 
than Edwards. New Haven, 1822. 

Captiv. — Indian Captivities. Samuel G. Drake. 
Auburn, 1850. 

Catlin. — Life Among the Indians. Geo. Catlin. Lon- 
don and Edinburgh. No date. 

Clark.— The Indian Sign Language. W. P. Clark. 
Philadelphia, 1885. 

Cold. — The History of the Five Indian Nations, etc. 
Cadwallader Colden. New York, 1904. (Re- 
print) . 

Copw. — Life, Letters, etc., of Geo. Copway. Autobi- 
ography. New York, 1850. 

Cush. — History of the Choctaw, etc. H. B. Cushman. 
Greenville, Tex., 1899. 



Dell. The North Americans of Yesterday. Frederick 

S. Dellenbangh. New York and London, 1902. 
Doe Hist. — The Documentary History of the State of 

New York. 4 vols. Edited by E. B. O'Calla- 

ghan. Albany, 1849-51. 
Dodge —Food Products of the North American Indians. 

J. R Dodge. Kept. Dept. Agr. 1870. 
Drake. — The Book of the Indians. Five books in one. 

Samuel G. Drake. Eighth Edn. Boston, 1841. 
fiastm. — The History of the State of New York. F. S. 

Eastman. New York, 1831. 
fi rf ] — Physiological and Medical Observations, etc. 

Ales Hrdlicka. Bn. Am. Eth. Bull. 34, 1908. 
jjandb. — Handbook of 'American Indians North of 

Mexico. Various authors. Bu. Am. Eth. Bull. 

30, 1907. 

Hath. Yog. — Hatha Yoga. Yogi Ramacharaka. Oak 
Park, 111., 1905. 

J] pel-. — History, etc., of Indian Nations Who Once In- 
habited' Pennsylvania, ttc. Jno. Heckewelder. 
Philadelphia, 1876. 

Uopl\ — Life Among the Piutes. Sarah Winnemncca 
Hopkins. Boston, 1883. 

hid. Narr. — Indian Narratives. Anon. Claremont, 
N. EL, 1854. 

Xey. — A Key into the Language, etc. Koger Williams. 

Coll. E. I. Hist, Socy. (Reprint.) 
En. and SI — Narratives of Knight and Slover. Anon. 

Cincinnati, 1867. (Reprint.) 
Uoyd. — Notes on "League of the Iroquois." Herbert 

M. Lloyd. New Edn, "League," 2 vols, in one. 

New York, 1904. 
McLaugh. — My Friend the Indian. James McLaugh- 
lin. Boston, 1910. 
Morq. — League of the Iroquois. 2 vols, in one. Lewis 

H. Morgan. New Edn. New York, 1904. 
Narr. — Narratives of New Netherland. Edited by J. 

Franklin Jameson. New York, 1909. 



Newh. — The Shrubs of Northeastern America. Ohas. 
S. Xewhall. Few York, 1897. 

Powell. — Technology, or the Science of Industries. J. 
W. Powell. Bu. Am. Eth. 20th Kept 

Ratz. — The History of Mankind. 3 vols. Frederick 
Eatzel. London, 1896. 

8ms. Fr. — Frontiersmen of Xew York. 2 vols. Jeptha 
K. Simms. Albany, 1882. 

8ms. Hist. — History of Schoharie County and Border 
Wars of Few York. Jeptha R. Simms. Al- 
bany, 1845. 

8ms. Trap. — Trappers of Kew York. Jeptha R. 

Simms. Albany, 1871. (Reprint.) 
Smith Jour. — A Tour of Four Rivers, etc., Being the 

Journal of Richard Smith. Edited by Francis 

W. Halsey. Few York, 1906. 
Starr. — American Indians. Frederick Starr. Boston, 

1899. 

Taopi. — Taopi and His Friends. Edited by William 

Welsh. Philadelphia, 1869. 
Thatch. — Indian Biography. 2 vols. B. B. Thatcher. 

Few York, 1832. 
Thos. — The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times. Cyrus 

Thomas. Few York, 1890. 
VanCamp. — Life of Moses VanCampen. Dansville. 

F. Y., 1841. • 



I 



I 



I 



Prefatory. 



The following memoir — one of several having com- 
mon plan and purpose — is written more particularly 
with reference to aboriginal life in the valley of the 
ripper Susquehanna. 

Judging by the pottery — perhaps the surest guide — 
and following the tentative conclusions of general in- 
vestigation, early dwellers in the region were Algon- 
quians — of Southern rather than Northern or Eastern 
affiliation. In the historic period the valley was domi- 
nated by the Iroquois and occupied in part by them, in 
part by their dependents, — the latter including Algon- 
qnians of the East as well as the South. Relics are 
mainly of the earlier time. 

To the occupants, of whatever stock or period, the 
writer has assigned for convenience • the general name 
of "Oneota" — aboriginal designation of the Oneida, the 
people in later days most prominent. One and all, they 
are spoken of as Red men or Brown; for they were 
either, being a red-brown race. 

"Medicine in the Forest" — a first draft and subject 
to revision — is printed at this time mainly that those 
to whom the writer has occasion to apply for casual as- 
sistance in the work, already well along, may more 
fully understand the end in view. 

Willard E. Yager, 
Oneonta, K Y., Jan. 16, 1911. 



! 



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We are fond of searching into remote An- 
tiquity, to know the Manners of our earliest Pro- 
genitors; and, if I am not mistaken, the Indians 
are Jiving Images of them. 

— Cadwaeeadee Coedex, 17 



! 



i 



-J 



I 



Of Succor in the Wilderness 
and the Need Thereof 



HE earlv European, adventuring in the forest 
world of the West, had no need to fear, that, 
ill or wounded, he could find no help. Along 
the old frontier of !N"ew York and Pennsyl- 
vania the fame of the Indian Doctor was yet great, a 
half century since, and a careful study of the records 
goes far to sustain the tradition. Thus the French 
colony to the Onondaga, 1656, experiencing in the 
month of August much sickness by reason of excessive 
heat, was by "the kind attention of the savages," we 
read, speedily relieved of "all disorders." 1 Prompt as 
effective was the treatment administered by the Iroquois 
accompanying the same expedition, in the case of a lone 
Huron found en route, who had been severely burned 
and half starved. He was ''soon" enabled to take the 
trail for Quebec. 

"They have not any physick," wrote Roger Williams, 
1643, of the Xarraganset. 2 But this was said appar- 
ently of the "plague," then of recent introduction from 
Europe ; since we read further that "the French disease" 
by "sweating and some potions they perfectly and speed- 
ily cure." 8 In the Representation of New Nefherland, 
1650, is twice allusion to native cure of dangerous and 
"inveterate" sores and wounds, by means of "roots, 
leaves and other little things." 4 Ash, writing in 1682" 
of the Carolina tribes, avers that "some have an ex- 
quisite knowledge" of simples and in the cure of "scor- 
butic, venereal and malignant distempers are aclmir- 

1— Adams vid Barb. 399. 2— Key 156. 3— lb. 125-128. 
4— Narr. 299, 301. 



13 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



able" ; while Cushman, a hundred years later, found 
the Chicasa ''remarkably successful in their practice," 
particularly with "common fevers" and the bite of ser- 
pents. 1 

The missionary Heekewelder, living among the Dela- 
ware^ and Shawnee of Pennsylvania and Ohio in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century, writes more ex- 
plicitly. The native practitioner, "by the simple applica- 
tion of natural remedies," succeeded "pretty well." The 
missionary himself had been cured of fever and "stub- 
born rheumatism," and he knew many, both Whites and 
Indians, who had resorted with equal success to the 
native practitioner. He mentions particularly the bene- 
fit experienced by the wives of the missionaries who 
consulted native wise-women for troubles peculiar to 
the sex; and declares with emphasis his belief that 
"there is no wound, unless absolutely mortal or beyond 
the skill of our own good practitioners, which an Indian 
surgeon (I mean the best of them) will not heal." 2 Not 
less noteworthy, at a much later day, is the skill of the 
Pani in the matter of wounds — Major Xorth, who was 
"in all respects well qualified to pronounce an opinion," 
telling Clark, 1884, that for a wound he preferred "the 
treatment of a good Pani doctor to the care of an ordi- 
nary [White] surgeon." 3 

Turning northward, we find that the Ojibwa had a 
"God of medicine," presiding "over the herbs of the 
earth," and that at their great spring festival many 
youth "were initiated into medical mysteries" and 
taught "the virtues of the herbs." 4 In his journal of 
the mission to the Santee Sioux, 1869, the Rev. Samuel 
Hinman notes that some of the remedies used "in their 
simple way" by the Indians in his charge, though de- 
rived from "the heathen practice of the old medicine- 
men," were "very good." 5 Finally, to show the general- 

l_ C ush. 497. 2— Heck. 228, 229. 3— Clark 252. 4— Copw. 
30, 31. 5— Taopi 23. 



11 



SUCCOR IN THE WILDERNESS 



ity of such skill and knowledge, let me add that Erd- 
licka, a very competent observer, investigating a few 
years since physiological and medical conditions among 
the tribes of the Southwest and northern Mexico, found 
that, decadent though most of these peoples are, the 
plants still employed, as extant methods of treatment, 
are not infrequently of genuine service. 1 

The respect which the reader may well conceive for 
|ie medical attainment revealed by such citations, — and 
ere it needful they might be much extended, — will 
be considerably enhanced if he call to mind that not 
until the beginning of the eleventh century could France 
boast a few pupils from the school of medicine then re- 
cently founded at Salerno; that during all the middle 
ages was no rational practice of medicine in Europe, 
and that the famous Ambroise Pare, father of French 
surgery, in the sixteenth century had still to say: tf Je 
le paused, Dieu le guerit — I dressed his wound, God 
healed him !" 

''When they are sick," wrote Coreal of the Florida 
natives, 1669, 2 "they have not a vein opened, according 
to our practice." Famous practice ! By Le Sage, 1715, 
it is thus satirized in the conversation between Dr. San- 
grado and Gil Bias: "I will immediately disclose to 
thee," remarks the worthy practitioner, "the whole ex- 
tent of that salutary art which I have professed so many 
years. . . Know, my friend, that all requisite is to 
bleed thy patients and make them drink warm water. 
That is the secret of curing all the distempers incident 
to man." "Bleeding and purgation," writes another 
French author, concerning this period ; "it was all the 
medicine of the time, and whoever spoke of anything 
else was a charlatan." 

Xot to carry farther the comparison, it will be ad- 
missible to remind the reader that barely a generation 
has passed since practitioners of the first rank considered 
1— Erd. 224, 231. 2— Voy. I., 39 v. Antiq. 362. 



15 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



malaria, as the term implies, a disease due to l exhala- 
tions from decaying vegetable matter" ; since patients 
in fever were rigorously denied water ; since consumpN 
lives were carefully sequestered from fresh air; and 
since the surgeon labored for "laudable pus.' 1 read 
that the practice of medicine has been "almost revolu- 
tionized within the last twenty years." Considering, 
however, that the profession seems yet unable to agree 
whether a common cold is due in part to draughts and 
exposure or exclusively to the presence of micro-organ- 
isms, humility appears still a virtue. Progress m medi- 
cal science, which as reflected in recent vital statistics 
shows in Massachusetts for example a diminished death 
rate only for ages under forty, a death rate rather on 
the increase for individuals above that age,— leaves 
something for the latter to desire. 

Compared with that of our forefathers, Red medical 
skill seems by no means inferior. Judged by the need 
which evoked it, it was indeed remarkable. For the 
primitive American demanded little of the leech 
Among the Southwest tribes, Erdlicka remarks excellent 
o-eneral endurance, strong digestion, good nervous con- 
trol better resistance to old age than m civilization 
The women are healthy, hardy, strong and very patient. 
Children are tall, sound, agile, sweet oi breath; though 
"by no means stolid," they do not laugh, scream nor 
cry so much as ours. 2 Congenital abnormality is rare. 



Bones are excellent, necrosis of importance being un, 
known and fracture comparatively infrequent Inj 
blood is pure; the skin supple; the nails and hair very 



I1C, t-Ll«0 Oiviu ^. rr ~~ 7 

healthy. 4 Breath is deep, the heart beats more slowly 
than with us. The temperature is not so hum. houses 
generally are normal. 5 A fine inheritance gives large 
freedom from the troubles which in civilization accom- 

153, 154. 5 — lb. 418, 141; 152; 154. 

16 



PRIMITIVE HEALTH 



pany teething, puberty, gestation, the menopause — re- 
markable resistance to secondary effects of alcohol and 
venereal disease. "When early hospital treatment is 
afforded," fatal cases even of smallpox are rare. 1 

So strong sets still the tide of pristine health and 
vigor, that exposed though now many of these tribes for 
generations to the baneful influence of civilization, and 
living under sanitary conditions vastly inferior to those 
of their ancestors, they yet are exempt from the fearful 
scourge of cancer — against which strove in vain, aided 
by all the science of the seventeenth century, Anne of 
Austria ; and which to-day, our science no greater, slays, 
according to figures recently published, one woman of 
every eight above middle age in the population of the 
Eastern states, one man in every twelve. 

Francis II., the petted elder son of Catherine de 
Medicis, was dwarfed and yellow with rickets. The 
Brown mother of the Southwest is never thus afflicted in 
her offspring, and more than a century ago, among the 
Indians of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Heckewelder ob- 
served the like fact. He remarked also the absence of 
"gout, gravel and scrofula." 2 Among the New Eng- 
land natives, Eoger Williams could hear of no calculus, 
an exemption which he attributed to "the corne of the 
country." 3 Alexander Henry, adopted among the Ojib- 
wa in 1763, and familiar with their neighbors the Ot- 
tawa, saw never a case in either tribe of "dropsy, gout 
or stone." 4 McLaughlin, long in charge of the Stand- 
ing Eock agencv, savs the Sioux, in the old days, "never 
had a cold." 5 

Among descendants of the primitive American in the 
Southwest, is little or no typhoid or scarlet fever; ser- 
ious affection of the liver or kidneys; asthma; disease 
of the heart or arteries; varicose vein or hemorrhoid; 
glandular affection of the breast; prostate trouble; 

1— Erd. 187, 174, 189; 190. 2— Heck. 223. 3— Key 59. 
4— Captiv. 306. 5— McLaugh. 394. 



17 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



hernia; disease whatever of the sexual organs; appen- 
dicitis, peritonitis, nicer of the stomach. 1 Malarial 
disease is frequent, sometimes dangerous. Common 
likewise are diseases of the respiratory organs, includ- 
ing pleurisy and pneumonia, the latter often fatal; and 
affections of the digestive apparatus, which, save for 
children, are rarely of moment, 2 Eheumatism is com- 
mon, seldom serious. Ophthalmia, due to sandstorm, 
causes blindness in some cases. Little skin disease is 
observed. As everywhere among surviving tribes, in- 
sanity is rare, paresis practically unknown. 3 There is 
no leprosy, no pathological obesity. 

The above data, summarized from the careful obser- 
vations of Erdlicka, more than warrant his modest con- 
clusion that "on the whole the health of the South- 
western and north Mexican non-civilized Indian is 
superior to that of the White living in large communi- 
ties." Allowance made for varying environment, the 
facts agree closely with the few available for the early 
Eastern peoples. ' Diseases of the Lenape (Delawares) 
and their neighbors in the time of Heckewelder were 
"fluxes, fevers and rheumatism," the last qualified as 
severe. Consumption was also then prevalent, but as 
to this there had been great change. "So late as about 
the middle of the last century [1750]," he adds, "the 
Indians were yet a hardy and healthy people and many 
very aged men and ivomen were seen among them." 4 

Col." James Smith, adopted in 1755 and living for 
some years among the Caughnawaga Iroquois, then 
with the Wyandot and Ottawa, near Sandusky, Ohio, — 
though minute in the narration of his experience, men- 
tions no sickness among them save rheumatism, and that 
apparentlv of a mild type. 5 Alexander Henry says of 
the Ojibwa and their neighbors, 1763, that "in general 
free from disorders," their ordinary complaints were 

1— Erd. 188, 190; 188, 189; 191; 188; 189; 191; 188. 2— 
lb. 173, 188. 3— lb. 191, 201; Handb. 540. 4— Heck. 220, 222. 
5— Cap'tiv. 225. 

18 



PRIMITIVE HEALTH 



inflammation of the lungs and rheumatism. For these 
he accounted by "their mode of life — so much exposed 
to wet and cold, sleeping on the ground and inhaling 
the night air." Dread of the night air was very pre- 
valent on the Frontier, and has by no means passed 
away. 

But the reader, in considering the question of native 
diseases, will have recalled perhaps certain heathenish 
passages in early New England chronicles, ascribing to 
a beneficent Providence the "plague" which two or three 
years before the landing of the Pilgrims had well-nigh 
destroyed the Wampanoag — thus preparing the way for 
a "chosen people." While it is impossible to name this 
disease, it was probably in the nature of the typhus 
fever which in 1763-64 reduced the Nantucket Indians 
within a few months from above 300 in number to less 
than ninety. 1 The Nantucket plague was introduced 
"by a ship from the South." As for several years be- 
fore the coming of the Pilgrims, White marauders in 
ships filled with the scum of western Europe had been 
kidnapping and plundering along all the coast of New 
England, "the workings of Providence" in the destruc- 
tion of the unfortunate Wampanoag become by no means 
inscrutable. In like manner, some fifteen years later, 
the Narraganset suffered, 2 and later still perished "two- 
thirds of the Indians on Long Island." 3 

Toward the close of the Crusades it became needful 
to provide in Erance alone some two thousand places 
for the reception of lepers. Whether the Hand of Provi- 
dence may be discerned in the introduction to Christian 
Europe of this hideous disease from the Orient, is a 
question I may leave to those skilled in theology. But 
let the reader observe that in similar manner western 
Europe communicated to the Bed world, not merely 
"ship's fever," but other scourges as dire. Among such 

1— Ind. Narr. 76; Erd. 420. 2— Thatch. I., 180. 3— Drake 
II., 75. 

19 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



may be reckoned — beside mumps and whooping cough — 
scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, cholera and tubercu- 
losis. 1 

Native testimony as to the introduction of disease by 
Whites though general, is positive. 2 It is amply sup- 
ported by White witness. 3 Strongly corroborative is 
the inability of the natives to deal with the diseases 
named; since against venereal disorder, to which they 
had at least been long exposed, they seem to have been 
very well able to protect themselves. 

Whether the disease last mentioned was native, is a 
question which has been much discussed ; but Erdlicka 
is positive that "among the less recent bones" of the 
Southwest there is no trace of its well-known effects. He 
remarks moreover that this holds true of the older osteal 
remains from Peru, California, the Northwest and 
"other localities, exclusive of the Southeastern 
mounds." 4 As some of these mounds are of measurably 
later date than the Discovery, 5 it seems not unreasonable 
to trace the scourge on this continent to the early navi- 
gator. 

In the long, men become fortified to a degree against 
conditions whatever. A Chinese city you may smell 
for a league. As filthy was the condition of Paris in 
the time of Philip Augustus (1165-1223), yet the 
population swarmed "in verminous health." Wonted to 
his plagues, armed with some knowledge of the danger 
and the way to meet or avoid it, the White man could 
thrive in the New World for all the poison he brought 
with him — which, seizing on virgin blood, piled forest 
and prairie with the dead. Of measles and smallpox 
perished no less than twenty out of thirty thousand 
Chocta in the first third of the nineteenth century. 6 
The Mandan in 1837 were reduced by smallpox from 

1— Handb 540. 2— e. g. Drake II., 57; Copw. 220; Heck. 
221- Hopk 41. 3— e.g. Eastm. 139; Captiv. 177; Cush. 141 
228,' 230, 389; Clark, 289; Taopi x. 4— Erd. 186, 191. 5— e. g. 
Thos. 44-45. 6— Cush. 141, 389. 

20 



PRIMITIVE HEALTH 



above 1600 to less than forty persons. 1 In 1841 died 
by the same disease some thirteen out of fourteen bands 
of Piegans, and in 1852 succumbed thereto every in- 
dividual in an Assinaboin camp of near three hundred 
lodges. 2 

Frightful though the devastation, it is closely par- 
alleled by the history of plagues in Europe. Thus by 
the "black-death," an infection which attacks the lungs 
and is now supposed to be conveyed by rats, there 
perished in England, toward the middle of the four- 
teenth century, not less than one-third of the entire pop- 
ulation. In this case as in that of European plagues in 
the West, the very deadliness of the contagion seems to 
prove original exemption. That under proper treat- 
ment the Brown man now shows uncommon resistance 
to smallpox, we have seen. Upon his robust constitution 
and better inheritance, even at this day, Erdlicka re- 
peatedly remarks. 

"So sweet the air, so moderate the clime, 
None sickly lives nor dies before his time." 
Thus wrote Edmund Waller of primitive Virginia. 
Nor was the fancy so far from reality. For if to 
diseases introduced we add those from which the Brown 
man is yet exempt, the field of medicine becomes nar- 
row indeed. 

1— Clark, 240. 2— lb. 70, 350. 



21 



II 



Red Anatomy, Physiology and 
Rational Etiology 

HEN in a work pretentious as the New and 
Unknown World of Montaims, published 
well along in the seventeenth century at 
Amsterdam, a center of learning, one may 
read that "the liver secretes the blood/' 1 and when 
further he recalls that but little earlier so fundamental 
a physiological fact as the circulation of the blood was 
yet unsuspected by the wisest of Europe — his expecta- 
tion as to knowledge of anatomy and physiology must 
be modest indeed for a world whose science reposed but 
in tradition and where was no recourse to the exper- 
ience of Arab and Koman, of Greek and Egyptian. 

Cushman tells with glee the story of a Choeta, who, 
falling over a log, conceived that his leg was injured 
because on rubbing it, he found that the kneecap moved. 
Perhaps, however, more than one reader may remem- 
ber approximately when first he discovered the like for 
his own body. 1 have seen elsewhere a similar story. 
They prove,' if true, a singularly belated experience of 
bodily ills, but nothing as to aboriginal knowledge of 
anatomv. On the other hand, in the very imperfect 
vocabulary of Bruyas the student ivill find names for 
most organs and' parts of the body, and Indian 
languages generally afford equivalent for common terms 
of the sort in English. 

The Mohawk considered the heart, erie (erienta), to 
be the seat of thought and emotion, as did also the 
Western tribes. 2 So our ancestors spoke literally, as 
figuratively still we do, of a brave or kind "heart." 
1— Doc. Hist. IV. 120. 2— Br. 112; Clark 31, 377. 
22 




ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 



Among the ISTarraganset michachurik, the soul, which 
a hath its name from a cleere sight or discerning/' was 
thought to have "her chief e residence" in the brain ; but 
"goodness" was in the heart, wuttah. 1 The word 
michachunk seems the equivalent of the Mohawk osken, 
being that which survives the body; 2 but whether with 
the Iroquois the soul had thus a specific residence, does 
not appear. 

Of the iS T arraganset explanation of important organic 
functions, Williams tells us merely that "they conceive 
there are many Gods or Divine Powers within the body 
of a man — in his pulse, his heart, his lungs and so 
forth." 3 This passage may rest on misapprehension of 
the Narraganset word manit, — used perhaps in answer 
to the Englishman's question, — which, like the term 
"medicine" so frequently heard in the West, implies 
probably mere mystery as well as divinity. 4 But taken 
in either signification, manit would have summed up 
the English inquirer's own knowledge in the premises — 
as for that matter, however minute the modern science 
of processes, it remains still the answer when the ulti- 
mate is sought. 

I do not know that the Brown man had ever counted 
the bones in the body. Centuries since the Thibetan 
did this, without notable gain thereby in rational medi- 
cine. But the Indian could set a broken bone or reduce a 
dislocation ; and knowing naught of the circulatory pro- 
cess, he yet distinguished between vein and arterv and 
between vein and vein. Thus the Maricopa, where 
a horse had received an injury in the eye, opened a vein 
on the temple; 5 and in Bruyas may be found the long 
word Jcatsinnonhiat-anneragon, to mistake a vein. 

In the Southwest gestation is very well understood, 
and there is good working knowledge of the anatomy in- 
volved. 6 That which by the Plains tribes was common- 

1— Key 113, 58, GO. 2— Br. 97. 3— Key 112. 4— Vid. Clark, 
248. 5— Erd. 249. 6— Erd. 55-57; 66, 163. 



23 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



ly spoken of as the woman's "mystery or medicine/ 71 
speculation in the Southwest connects, not unnaturally, 
with the new moon. 2 

From a passage in Percy's Discourse of Virginia, 
printed early in the seventeenth century, I learn that 
Edward Brookes, gentleman, died in outward voyage to 
the colony, at the island of Mona in the "West Indies, 
his "fat melted within him" by reason of the "great 
heate and drought of the country." The modern practi- 
tioner, if unable from this description to pronounce ac- 
curately upon the character of Mr. Brookes' ailment, 
can at any rate recall without difficulty a considerable 
list of diseases, — beginning perhaps with "lockjaw" and 
ending with "worms," — the very nomenclature of which 
it has" been found needful to change, by reason of the 
absurd etiology embodied in old terms. 

Let us not then be surprised to learn that the Apache 
and several other tribes fear in infancy "falling fon- 
tanel" ; that convulsions are attributed among the Hopi 
to a "twisted heart" ; that among the Pima deformity 
may result from touching objects disturbed by whirl- 
wind, and many disorders from contact with the blood 
of the hated Apache. 3 The Papago sometimes cure 
headache with a plaster on either temple, to "stop the 
air from entering;" the Mescaleros think rheumatism 
may be caused by contact with a woman in labor. 4 So 
in Bruyas you 'may find gatsinnigwara-wenrion, the 
liver to twist and cause vomiting. 

I have knoAvn persons who practiced exceeding caution 
in drinking spring water, lest they might "swallow a 
lizard." Dire accounts of the ravages wrought by "lizard 
in the stomach" are still occasionally published, and 
children in the country are yet cautioned against touch- 
ing toads, lest warts result. Similar to the latter con- 
ception is that of the Pima, who are very well per- 
l—Clark 254. 2— e. g. Erd. 157. 157, note. 3— Erd. 75, 249; 
226, 240; 244, 243. 4— lb. 242, 235. 

24 



RATIONAL ETIOLOGY 



suaded that the badger can in some way cause swelling 
of the neck, the animal itself having a short thick neck 
that appears swollen. 

"Curious/' no doubt, this primitive diagnosis. Yet I 
know not how we may smile superior, resting as the 
error clearly does, on mental vices from which perhaps 
mankind will never be redeemed — -the strange unwilling- 
ness to admit ignorance, the mania to explain where 
explanation is yet impossible. The "untutored savage" 
is by no means always wrong. His observation is con- 
stant and keen; his logic rigorous as that of the As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science. It is in the 
induction that he commonly fails, as do we ; and even 
there is sometimes a surprising correctness. 

When Burton was in the Somali country, 1854, the 
natives assured him that "deadly fevers" were caused 
by mosquito bite. The famous traveler thought "the 
superstition" due to the fact that "mosquitoes and 
fevers become formidable at about the same time" ; but 
fifty years later etiologies were agreed that the truth 
lay with the Somali rather than their critic. Going 
north of Bangkok, in the jungle, the traveler finds the 
natives building their houses high above ground, and 
higher and higher as malarial fever is more feared. 
They do this to avoid the infection. It is the method 
of the Eoman campagna and in a measure is successful. 
The Siamese do not attribute the fever to mosquitoes, 
apparently, and indications accumulate that there can 
be malaria without mosquitoes. 

I may cite another instance, which if not related to 
medicine, is wholly pertinent to the argument. Experi- 
ments recently conducted in England appear to show 
that the sterility of soils is due in large measure to the 
multiplication therein of organisms hostile to the bac- 
teria of putrefaction. Pots, the soil in which had been 
heated to a considerable degree, were found to yield 
twice as much wheat as others filled with soil not thus 



25 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



treated. The explanation offered is that the fertilizing 
bacteria which survive the heating process, freed 
thereby in great measure from their enemies, forthwith 
increase enormously, to the betterment of the soil. And 
thereupon it is recalled that cultivators of India have 
from time immemorial heated the soil to increase fer- 
tility, and that there is clear allusion to the process in 
the Georgics of Virgil. 

So much for primitive knowledge ; and had the White 
barbarian who overran early America, possessed the 
intelligence to study aboriginal institutions and pre- 
serve adequate record, I doubt not we might thereby 
have multiplied illustration. The Brown man of the 
West was the mental equal of the East Indian, the 
superior of the African. Coming to the subject of 
remedies, we shall find our debt to him by no means in- 
considerable. 

In the account of ISTew Xetherland by • Montanus it 
is gravely set down that the natives when they "exper- 
ience a pain in any part, say a devil lurks therein." 1 
The passage seems to be based on a statement of Dominie 
ALegapolensis, of Greenbush, who thirty years earlier 
had written: "If they are sick or have a pain or sore- 
ness anywhere in their limbs, and I ask them what ails 
them, they say the devil sits in their body, or in the 
sore places, and bites them there." 2 Simple old Dutch- 
man! One can well imagine the mischievous Mohawk 
thus teasing him ; for Heckewelder tells how the Lenape 
loved nothing better than to play upon the credulity of 
the White man, who thought himself "so superior in 
wisdom and knowledge." 3 

The statements, both original and secondary, may be 
safely assigned to the same category with the Dominie's 
wonderful tale of tortoises about Albany which were 
"four feet long," had sometimes "two heads" and were 
dangerously "addicted to biting." 4 In all ordinary 
1— Doc. Hist. IV., 130. t— Narr. 177. 3— Heck. 322. 4— 
Narr. 178. 

26 



RATIONAL ETIOLOGY , 

troubles, the Mohawk knew quite as well what ailed 
him as, in like case, did the. Dutchman. The reader 
consulting Bruyas will find phrases in plenty such as: 
Ragaiontes, he feels out of sorts; wakatsi, I am hoarse; 
ongwatos, I have a swelling; atiatagwegon, to be con- 
stipated; enniseraronni, to have intermittent fever; 
twarasita-garliathon, to turn one's foot; gannerio te 
hagakarent, he has a film on the eve. And for all these 
ailments, even to cataract, there were adequate original 
remedies. 

Unable to trace the course of a disease, the Brown 
man often was not without some rational idea as to 
propagation and character. Thus in Bruyas we find: 
jongiv-anneratarinnes, we have the pest — the root 
onnera, be it noted, meaning literally a rod or switch 
and the trope being exactly that which we employ in 
expressions such as "scourged with smallpox." And 
further may be read: Aseronnige etiotention onnera- 
tarinnes, the pest came from the European. In like 
manner, and truthfully, Canonicus accused the English 
of bringing the plague — Drake supposes because he was 
"superstitious" (O, excellent word!); but quite as 
probably because he realized the nature of the disorder. 
So the Pai-Ute, still in primitive condition, attributed a 
destructive malady on a certain occasion, by no means 
to a spell or to the devil, but to the poisoning by Whites 
of the water they drank. 1 

In the earliest account of the Mohawk, 1631, it ap- 
pears that a certain chief, "Adriochten," lived a quarter 
of a mile distant from the first castle, because many 
therein had "died of smallpox." 2 Before the same 
disease, Soger Williams, writing likewise in 1634, tells 
us that among the Narraganset "whole towns" fled — 
the course which in Europe, particularly in Italy, was 
often pursued in face of a great contagion. Indeed, in 
countries subject to violent epidemic of cholera, one 
1— Hopk. 41. 2— Narr. 141. 



27 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



of the first indications of the coming of the plague is the 
flight of the birds. 

The Tarahimiare, still a fairly primitive tribe of 
northern Mexico, have observed that smallpox does not 
commonly recur in the individual, and a young man 
who has had the disease is therefore preferred in mar- 
riage. The Mescalero Apache "understand clearly" 
that consumption is contagious, and the Pima "know 
that it runs in families." Thoughout the Southwest it 
is common, after a death, to burn everything with which 
the deceased came in contact during illness, and this 
avowedly to prevent contagion. There seems no valid 
reason to regard the practice as other than original. 1 

Even though for long the Brown man was very help- 
less against the hideous plagues poured out upon him 
from another world, I know not that the fact can be 
held to impeach either observation or reflective powers. 
Keal knowledge of the entire group _ of important 
diseases now recognized as of bacterial origin was sealed 
to our fathers; and what is perhaps the deadliest and 
most loathsome scourge of all in civilization still utterly 
defies its famous science. It is wonderfully to the credit 
of the primitive American that he has been able pretty 
well to protect himself against European sexual disease 
— curing the milder forms ; recognizing the hereditabil- 
ity of the worst, treating it with considerable success 
and using fairly effective prophylaxis. 2 

1— Erd. 229, 235, 243, 230. 2— Antiq. 33; Erd. 236, 245; 
185, 189, 231. 



28 



Ill 



Of Supernatural Diagnosis 

EOTEMAN, brother of Charlemagne, re- 
garded the blindness that befell him as 
punishment for his many sins against the 
pious Hildegarde. This conception of dis- 
ease in retribution long obtained. In Bradford's ac- 
count of the voyage of the Pilgrims, we read that "it 
pleased God, before they came halfe seas over, to smite" 
a certain "proud and very profane yonge man" with a 
"greeveous disease, of which he dyed in a desperate 
manner." 

The citation is near three centuries old. That civil- 
ized man now regards disease as emanating; in some cases 
from God, I will not undertake to maintain. Yet I 
have often heard the idea advanced, and by persons of 
general intelligence. At any rate, it can hardly be said 
to determine modern treatment. 

Our forefathers, in sickness and misfortune, recog- 
nized even other supernatural influences. The "Body 
of Liberties" adopted by the general-court of Massachu- 
setts, in 1641, declares that "if any man or woman . . . 
hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be 
put to death." There were spirits, then. A century 
earlier the little Maximilian had been expressly per- 
mitted to study black maq-ic, on condition that he did 
not practice it. Roger Williams, 1643, speaks of Satan's 
"policie" and ascribes certain notable cures wrought by 
Narraganset shamans to the "helpe of the divell." 1 
John Wesley, 1703-91, attributed to Satan sickness, 
nightmare, storms and earthquake. 2 

The idea yet lingers in civilization of supernatural 
agencies less definite. Why are you told to "knock 

1— Key 146, 158. 2— Taine, Eng. Lit. II., 68. 




29 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



wood/' when speaking of freedom from disease or acci- 
dent ? The admonition is often more than half serious. 
What is feared and propitiated? a You know the 
Italians, Madam," wrote the author of Tolla, "and yon 
know that in their eyes the world is peopled with in- 
fluences, good and bad." "Unable to believe in God," 
says Zola of his heroine Madeleine Ferat, "she yet be- 
lieved in Powers." Hall Game's Manx grandmother 
had entire faith in "every kind of supernatural influ- 
ence," — to her "the world and air were full of spiritual 
beings." 1 And similar ideas are common among Celtic 
peoples everywhere. 

If in civilization generally is abundant trace of the 
primitive conception that morbid conditions may be due 
to supernatural causes ; if still, among the enlightened, 
the mind is by no means free from the dread thought 
that misfortune, including illness, is sometimes in the 
nature of supernatural punishment, — it would be 
strangely anomalous did the Eed world, in the stone 
age, afford no parallel. The savage Australian regards 
all death not produced by visible violence as of super- 
natural origin. 2 But the Brown man, as we have seen, 
by no means invoked the extraordinary in ordinary ail- 
ments. It was strange and obstinate disease, obscure 
causes, widespread fatality which induced such reason- 
ing and called for the intervention of the "Shaman," the 
intermediary between man and the Powers. 

Erdlicka tells us that the materia medica of the Tepe- 
cano, a Mexican tribe, "consists of many herbs, and 
when these fail, are employed prayer, song and cere- 
mony." 3 The first traveler among the Mohawk is in- 
vited to see the devil driven from a man, who, "very 
sick," had been "treated without success during a con- 
siderable time." The supernatural diagnosis and treat- 
ment appear to have been the final resort. 

I am aware that for many irksome conditions, civili- 
l_ M y Story 10. 2— Ratz. I., 374. 3— Erd. 251. 



30 



SUPERNATURAL DIAGNOSIS 



zation finds a sort of sorry consolation in the assumption 
of vastly superior knowledge; but really Mooney is by 
no means justified in the broad statement that "among 
the Indians the professions of medicine and religion 
are inseparable. 1 ' The ancient thanksgiving address of 
the Iroquois, as recorded by Parker, while ascribing 
disease like other evil to malign spirits, returns thanks 
to the "herbs and plants of the earth,'' 1 which through 
Haw&nneyu, the Master, can cure. 1 The treatment, then, 
was commonly rational. 

Bruyas defines the word hateisiens as meclecin, physi- 
cian; while atsinnahen he defines as jongleur, juggler. 2 
The latter* translation is to be supplemented by the ob- 
servation of Henry, 3 that "juggler" was the term ap- 
plied by the French to the native conjuror or shaman. 
The different words used by the Mohawk clearly indi- 
cate different functions. 

Of the Chocta, Cushman tells us that "they believed 
diseases originated in part from natural causes," seek- 
ing in nature for remedies. "Graver maladies were in- 
explicable and for such they used incantation.' 14 Final- 
ly we have the very explicit statement of Heckewelder, 
who, speaking of "physicians and surgeons," says : "By 
these names I mean to distinguish the good and honest 
practitioners who are in the habit of curing and healing 
by the simple application of natural remedies, without 
any mixture of superstition in the manner of preparing 
or administering them." 5 

Theory and practice varied from tribe to tribe. The 
Tinne of the cold and benumbing ^North were by no 
means so rational as the Lenape. Even in the kindly 
South land there were places, where, as Wassenaer 
writes, was for various reasons little or no "succor" ; 
that is, where, as with the hard-pressed Australian, be- 
lief in the supernatural greatly overshadowed reason and 

1— Morg. I., 211, 194. 2— Br. 43, 105. 3— Captiv. 308. 4— 
Cush. 228. 5— Heck. 228. 



31 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



natural means of relief. But, in general, as primarily 
the same chronicle states, there was "abundant means" 
to cure "with herbs and leaves or roots" ; and every- 
where was at least the beginning of observation and 
rational medicine, just as with our own ancestors : an 
incipient science, destined little by little to circumscribe 
the domain of the supernatural in the healing art, 
though never perhaps altogether to subdue it, — as wit- 
ness the rise in these latter days of Christian Science; 
not to mention the "spirit healing" yet so common. 

Taking the references together, it appears to have 
been the opinion of the Bed world that the supernatural 
might act to the detriment of man of its own volition — 
whether, if a beneficent power, justly, in punishment 
of offences against divine law ; or, being an evil power, 
in mere caprice and malevolence. Evil spirits might 
also be brought to exert their malign influence in hu- 
man affairs — causing disease, misfortune and death — 
though the agency of some human being, the familiar 
witch or wizard. 

Belief in witchcraft was widespread in primitive 
America — a fact to surprise no one who remembers that 
at Edinburgh, early in the seventeenth century, were 
executed for sorcery no less than thirty persons in a 
single day ; and that the reality of the crime was main- 
tained by James I., by Lord Justice Holt and by "some 
of the first characters in the English nation." 

The Iroquois punished witchcraft with death, as did 
contemporary Massachusetts; and for this offence died 
Father Jogiies, among the Mohawk, 1646, 1 — eleven 
years before the extradition, at East Hampton, L. I., 
of a poor woman named Garlock, charged with sorcery 
in Connecticut. 2 At this time France and Switzerland 
were zealously burning witches, and more than a century 
later a woman was shot as a witch in Schoharie county, 

l_Doc. Hist. IV., 20. 2— Doc. Hist. I., 683. 



32 



SUPERNATURAL DIAGNOSIS 



New York, where among the Germans the belief long 
lingered. It still exists in parts of Pennsylvania. 

Jogues was executed because supposed to have 
caused by magic a failure of the corn crop. Among the 
Znni epidemics and persistent general misfortune are 
often ascribed to sorcery. Erdlicka mentions a case of 
tuberculous meningitis, which a Mescalero shaman — 
failing to cure it, as for that had the agency physician 
before him — attributed in final diagnosis to ivizardry. 1 
Occasionally the native Southwestern practitioner points 
out the sorcerer. Death does not always folloiv, exile 
being sometimes deemed sufficient. 2 

The Lenape believed that a wizard made use of a 
"deadening substance," projected upon the victim 
"through the air" or by other indefinable means. 3 This, 
though hardly the same, reminds one of "the evil-eye" 
— described by Robert Hearne, 1793, as a "blasting 
power" in the look, whereby certain persons "injure 
whatever offends." Belief in the evil-eye is still widely 
prevalent in parts of Europe, and only a year since 
formed the basis of a case brought in a New Jersey 
court. 

The unwillingness of Western Indians to be painted 
or photographed was first remarked by Catlin, 4 and has 
since been frequently observed. A passage in Henry's 
narrative throws light upon the matter, wherein, speak- 
ing of the Ojibwa, he mentions the belief current among 
them that "by drawing the figure of a person in sand or 
ashes," and "then pricking it with a sharp stick," a 
sorcerer could cause "the individual represented" to 
"suffer accordingly." 5 It is obvious that a person possess- 
ing a picture or photograph might be supposed to have 
opportunity for mischief great as exercised by means 
of a sand-drawing. The general conception is that 
of the "puppet," which in New England the witch was 
supposed to employ, in similar fashion,, to the same end. 

1— Erd. 235. 2— lb. 169, 229. 3— Heck. 240. 4— Catlin 
158. 5— Captiv. 308. 

33 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



Perhaps the reader will have anticipated the testi- 
mony of Heckewelder that an Indian believing himself 
"struck 1 ' by witchcraft was speedily the prey of actual 
disease. "His spirits sink, his appetite fails, he is 
disturbed in his sleep, he pines and wastes away; or 
a fit of sickness seizes him and he dies at last," victim 
of imagination. 1 

With supernatural diagnosis generally belongs the 
belief — for example, of the Pima and Papago — that ill- 
ness, and often fatal illness, may result from the "call 
of the dead." Symptoms are frequent dreams of those 
dead, coupled with loss of flesh and general lassitude. 2 
The conception is thoroughly in accord with primitive 
thinking. Indeed, some such thought, under circum- 
stances such as death following death where persons 
were closely related or much attached, may well have 
crossed the mind of the most rational. In Philadelphia, 
some few months since, a girl of ten shot herself, assign- 
ing as the reason that for four years she had heard con- 
stantly the call of her dead mother. 

In the Southwest we find the idea that if a dog is 
killed, though by accident, its ghost, if unappeased, 
may bring fever on the slayer's child. So a rat killed 
may thus cause chills. 3 By this belief may be explained 
passages such as Henry's account of a feast made among 
the Ojibwa, and tobacco burned, to satisfy the spirit of 
a slain bear. Such seems a possible explanation also of 
Williams' statement that the Xarraganset believed the 
deer to have "a divine power." 4 

Mythic animals, or their spirits, might also cause 

disease 5 ; and finally we have the idea that a living 

animal, or its soul, and the spirit of a thing inanimate — 

a stone, a mountain, a star — may affect and afflict man. 6 

This is the most primitive conception of all, perhaps ; 

yet I have heard a civilized man curse a stone over 

1— Heck. 240. 2— Erd. 244. 3— Erd. 243. 4— Key 142. 
5— Handb. 836. 6— Powell li., lii.; Erd. 221. 



34 



SUPERNATURAL DIAGNOSIS 



which he stumbled, and have seen another, of ruder 
sort, shake his fist at a mountain to which he seemed in 
some way to attribute a great physical misfortune. 
Here, at any rate, is the root of astrology, 1 which is yet 
practiced, and the close explanation of the word 
"lunacy" and of the association of sickness with the 
conjunction of Sirius and the sun, "dog-days" — it being 
the spirit of the moon, as of the star, which was baleful. 

It is to be observed of the Red world, in concluding 
this brief discussion of supernatural etiology, that the 
influence of spirits was not uncommonly exercised 
through material means, — as a hair, a thorn, a worm, 
an insect, — which, introduced in the sufferer's body in 
some indefinite way — during sleep, perhaps, — set up 
and maintained the morbid conditions. 2 Such an ob- 
ject was often one suggesting by its appearance or 
nature the symptoms observed. 3 In Bruyas' phrase 
gannerenhata-takwan, take the worm from the body, and 
in others related or of like import, we have the trace 
perhaps of this last primitive notion, among the old 
Iroquois. Where such material cause of disease existed, 
it was the business of the healer to discover and remove 
it, some of the means pursued to which end will in due 
place appear. 4 

1— Vid. Brd. 53. 2— Erd. 221, 223. 3— lb. 223. 4— Sec- 
tion VI. 



35 



IV 



Of Medicines 



HERE can be no question that the folk medicine 
of the Frontier was derived mainly from the 
Indian. Such is the tradition; and it is cer- 
tain that the immigrant had in the outset 
small knowledge of plants, the most of which were 
seen for the first in the new laud. "It is not to be 
doubted," says the Representation of New Netherlands 
"that experts would be able to find many simples of 
great and different virtues," — of which the writer was 
confident, because, he tells us, of the knowledge in such 
matters upon the part of the natives. 

From the Brown man came the use, along the Border, 
of arbutus in rheumatism; of boneset and staghorn 
sumac for colds and sore throat ; of goldthread and 
moose-maple leaf for sores and inflammation; of winter- 
berry, ink-berry and golden-seal in fevers; of wild 
cherry and the blackhaw as tonics; of the elder (cana- 
densis), which was "almost a pharmacy in itself," — and 
of many other plants and shrubs common in the old 
folk medicine. 

One of the best practitioners of my acquaintance as- 
sured me, not so many years since, that such "old- 
granny remedies" were by no means to be despised. 
Whatever their value, they are now obsolescent ; nor 
did they ever go beyond the more obvious in the native 
practice. Yet of the Red materia medica we are not 
without some particulars. While little is to be learned 
among modern Indians in proximity to civilization, — 
who for the most part have in this matter, as in others, 
fallen into ignorance or the White way, 1 — divers of 

1— Beau. Na. 113; Erd. 249. 



36 



OF MEDICINES 



the old remedies are still in use among remote tribes. 
And there is occasional early record. 

Cartier speaks with enthusiasm of a medicine pre- 
scribed for his crew, sick with scurvy, by the Iroquois 
at Quebec, 1535-36. It was an infusion of the bark 
and leaves of the haneda [aneta], oneta being still the 
Onondaga name for the hemlock spruce, well known as 
possessing powerful anti-scorbutic properties. In a 
severe attack of pleurisy, the old woodsman Jonathan 
Wright had recourse, with excellent result, to bleeding 
and a strong "tea/' made also of the oneta — a treatment 
which probably he had learned during prolonged inter- 
course with the descendants, perhaps, of these same 
Iroquois. 1 

Among the Eastern peoples generally, for colic and the 
like, a decoction of prickly-ash (xanthoxylum) was pre- 
pared, the root being used. This or the root of the 
angelica-tree (aralia) was employed as a blood puri- 
fier; 2 and from native practice the early White physi- 
cian appears to have derived the use of the berry of 
xanthoxylum in "typhoid conditions." The tincture of 
prickly-ash berries Dr. King considered for this purpose 
"superior to any other kind of medicine." 3 

The sassafras was in high repute among the Iroquois. 
The French at Onondaga, 1657, wrote of it as "mar- 
velous," saying that the leaves bruised would in a short 
time close "all kinds of wounds." 4 The roots, twigs 
and berries were also employed, in various disorders, 
dysentery being specified. Brant, with Richard Smith, 
near the mouth of the Otego in the summer of 1769, 
feeling somewhat indisposed, takes "some tea of the 
sassafrass root." 5 Among the Southern tribes sassafras 
was used "for the purification of the blood." 6 

Wild ginger was a forest specific for indigestion. 7 

Roger Williams mentions an infusion of "chips of the 

walnut tree," the hickory probably, for a mild aperient ; 

1— Sms. Trap. 2G9. 2— Loskiel vid. Beau. Wd. 195. 3— 
Newh. 48. 4— Relation 1657, vid. Beau. Wd. 19G. 5— Smith 
Jour. G2. G — Antiq. 34. 7— e. g. Kn. and SI. 30. 



37 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



and fruit of sasemineash , the cranberry, he thought 
to be ''excellent against fevers." 1 Among the North- 
west tribes of forty years since, the thimbleberry was 
consumed in quantity as a particularly efficacious anti- 
scorbutic. 2 

Heckewelder, who for "two days and nights" had 
'''suffered the most excruciating pain" through felon, 
was relieved "entirely;" in a half-hour, by a "poultice 
made of the root of the common blue violet." 3 Loskiel, 
also among the Lenape, tells of the fruit and root of 
the tulip tree as a cure for fever and ague — a disorder 
in which the wood or buds of the common elder fur- 
nished likewise "an excellent remedy." Many of the 
early settlers considered the bark of the flowering dog- 
wood, also employed by the natives, in fever, to be little 
inferior to cinchona ; and valuable in much the same way 
were bark and seed of the swamp laurel. 4 

The Lower Creeks, for disorders of the stomach and 
intestines, valued so highly the whiteroot or ginseng 
(pan. norida), that, not having the plant in their own 
country, they readily gave two or three deerskins for 
a single root. 5 Cushman, among the Chocta, mentions 
the use of dried persimmon for bowel difficulty and 
poultices of ground-ivy (nepeta) for sores and wounds. 
He adds that the Chocta "possessed many valuable 
secrets," believing that the Great Spirit "had provided 
a remedy in plants for all diseases." 6 

Among the Pani, Clarke notes the remedial use of 
wormwood (artemesia), sweet-flag (acorus), the horse- 
mint (monarda) and the wild mint (men. canadensis) 
— though this without specifying the application. 7 

The Southwestern tribes at this day have many 
vegetal cough medicines, more or less effective, — like 
our own. Among other remedies, used with good re- 
sults, Erdlicka mentions the root of euphorbia and of 

1— Key 90. 2— Dodge 415. 3— Heck. 229. 4— vid. Loskiel 
qu. Beau. Wd. 195, 196. Newh. 36. 5— Antiq. 34-5. 6— Cush. 
228-29. 7— Clark 253. 



38 



OF MEDICINES 



clematis, in indigestion and for taxation; chrysotham- 
nus, an infusion of the tops applied to the body, for 
measles and chicken pox; mesquite sap, as a tea, for 
deep-seated soreness of the throat; pennyroyal, inhaled, 
for persistent headache ; decoctions of cedar and juniper, 
in parturition; izie-huie (not identified), for pain in 
the bowels; tarragon (artem. dracunculoides) , a poul- 
tice of the root, for contusions; boiled mesquite sap, a 
lotion for pemphigous or other sores — and the "wavish" 
■ (yerba-mansa) , "reputed very effectual in syphilis." 1 
Fever in the Southwest was often treated with decoc" 
tions of the wild sage (artem. tridentata) , used as a 
tea. 2 

Occasionally we read of some animal or mineral sub- 
stance employed in native medicine. In general these 
are clearly signatory — as such to be hereinafter ex- 
plained. But the Iroquois showed the way to the springs 
of Saratoga, to which from old time they had resorted ; 
and the use of sulphur waters, internally and as a medi- 
cine, noted by Erdlicka among the Huichol, must have 
been quite general. Thus the "Indian" sulphur spring 
near Oquaga, in the Susquehanna valley, had been care- 
fully stoned up, as the story runs, before discovery by 
the immigrants; and the springs of Eichfield and 
Sharon were thought, when first observed, to have been 
much frequented. 

According to Dodge, the Eavaho, after eating the 
wild potato, of which they were very fond, were wont, 
in order to avoid possible colic, to take a little earthy 
matter "containing magnesia." 3 Coreal mentions that 
the ancient Seminole sometimes employed violent 
emetics of calcined shell. 4 Eaccoon skin burned and 
powdered was also used as an emetic 5 — though its use, 
as that of powdered shell, may have been signatory. 

Vegetable poisons and their antidotes were well 
understood, 6 though Erdlicka observes that few poison- 

l_Rept. 232, 239, 245, 235, 56 and CI, 235, 238, 245. 2— 
Clark 324. 3— Dodge 409. 4— Antiq. 29. 5— Heck. 225. 6— 
Antiq. 249; Handb. 836. 

39 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



ous plants of the Southwest are comprised in the native 
materia mediea. 1 It is recorded that the Pequot rene- 
gade "Wequash" came to his death by poison, at the 
hands of his own people, not many years after the 
Pequot war, — perhaps for his services to the English 
in that shameful slaughter. Among the neighboring 
Lenape the root of the mandrake was sometimes em- 
ployed for such a purpose ; and early in the history of 
the Susquehanna valley a young Indian committed 
suicide by eating the root of the lethal hemlock (cicuta). 

Concerning the value of many native remedies, there 
can be no question. 2 Of plants used by the Cherokee, 
with which he was more or less acquainted, Mooney 
reckoned that something above one-third "actually 
possessed medical virtues" and were rationally applied. 3 
While this is no large proportion, it will compare 
favorably with that which would be approved by the 
modern practitioner in the pharmacopeia of a century 
since. Of worthless native medicines a majority were 
of the signatory or talismanic class ; but in all the list 
is not one more absurd than the famous "beaver-stone," 
spoken of by Montanus, 1671, — "an effectual remedy 
for mania, amenorrhea, dizziness, gout, lameness, belly 
and tooth ache, dullness of vision, poisoning and rheu- 
matism." 4 "In knowledge of real specifics the Brown 
man was by no means behind his Dutch or !N~ew Eng- 
land contemporary, and the recognized value of such of 
his remedies as cinchona, jalapa, hydrastis, sanguinaria, 
xanthoxyhim, podophyllin, hamamelis — seems more 
than to hint at superior attainment. " 

I have already alluded to the doctrine of signatures. 
By this prase is conveniently expressed the world-wide 
conception that a disease may be cured through the 
agency of something in nature which suggests by its ap- 
pearance the symptoms or the part affected. Thus among 

1— Erd. 231. 2— Handb. 837. 3— See Dell. 373. 4— Doc. 
Hist. IV. 120. 

40 



OF MEDICINES 



the Chinese, the root of the ginseng (aralia, panax) is 
a panacea, because very often it assumes in a rude 
way the figure of a man. So, too, apparently, in ancient 
times, of the European mandrake (mandragora) , the 
man -drake— though here the evidence is not so clear. 

Ginseng was well known to the Ked world, and among 
the Alaskans was supposed to impart occult power. 1 Of 
more repute as a general remedy wherever found, ap- 
pears, however, to have been the bloodroot (sanguinaria) 
— known to the Mohawks as onnonkwat, medicine, the 
medicine, by reason evidently of its peculiar bloodlike 
juice. 

A signatory remedy among the Hopi is a decoction of 
thistle, in dry pharyngitis, because of the prickly feeling 
in the patient's throat. Among the Papago, acute indi- 
gestion, with its burning sensation, is treated with an 
infusion of red earth from the fireplace. Hough notes 
the employment of clematis as a hair restorative, — this 
because of its hair-like blossom, a reason so far more 
specious than assignable for like nostrums of civilization 
that clematis might well take their place. 

Analogous to the doctrine of signatures is the belief 
of the Pima that certain ailments thought to be an effect 
of lightning, may be cured by drinking water wherein 
has been soaked a splinter from a lightning-riven tree. 
The badger disease, a swelling of the neck, is cured by 
tying over it a badger's tail. The feathers of the owl, 
by reason of the association of this bird with the super- 
natural, are used against the malady due to the call of 
the dead. A weasel's skin assists parturition, because 
the animal so readily evades obstructions. 2 

Signatory remedies and those akin pass readily, it 
will be evident, into true fetishes : that is, such as em- 
ployed solely for their magic quality, — of which here- 
after. 3 In the East they do not appear to have been so 
much in evidence as in the West, though the difference 
l_ Do dge 407. 2— vid. Erd. 240, 244. 3— Section VI. 



41 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



may be due merely to lack of data. Heckewelder, how- 
ever, notes the "superstitious notion" of the Lenape that 
for an emetic the water used "must be drawn up a 
stream; if for a cathartic, downward." "With this only 
exception," he declares, "the Indian physicians are per- 
haps more free from fanciful theories than those of any 
other nation upon earth." 1 Which, considering that 
this was written a century since, we may very well be- 
lieve. 

After all, there is something in all this primitive 
thought which reminds one of "similia similibus curen- 
iur." The Brown man could not give tincture of fire 
in fever, but he was close to the idea with his earth 
from the fireplace. And the fire-earth was by no means 
so reprehensible as the cornucopia of mineral poisons, 
armed with which the old-time "allopath," in all good 
faith, went cheerfully to his struggle with the unknown. 

Signatory conceptions were invoked for moral as well 
as physical infirmity. The Algonquians of the St. John 
river held that eating dogmeat, the dog being regarded as 
a brave animal, would impart courage. 2 Drake gives, 
from the Indian Chronicle, a case where a Massachu- 
setts native drank the heartblood of another, because 
the latter possessed great strength. 3 Much of the so- 
called "cannibalism" noted here and there among primi- 
tive Americans, turns evidently upon this idea. It is 
perhaps not more irrational than that underlying the 
confection, by a famous New York practitioner, of a 
certain "elixir of life," for which much was antici- 
pated some years since. The drinking of bullock's 
blood, still in vogue, I believe, will be referred to more 
sophisticated reasoning — something like that which in- 
duces the native of the Congo to bathe in human blood 
for skin disease. But Phillpotts, in one of his stories, 
mentions a belief yet surviving in Devonshire that of 
great virtue in disease is "oil of man" (oleum Jiu- 
1— Heck. 224, 228. 2— Captiv. 97. 3— Drake III. 82. 
42 



OF MEDICINES 



manum.) It is of special efficacy when prepared from 
the skulls of " strong men." 

Heckewelder thought the Lenape "too apt to give ex- 
cessive doses," in their medication. But it is to be re- 
membered that their patients were very hardy. Dosing 
was not commonly repeated. The infrequency of pana- 
ceas in this early medicine is certainly remarkable, as 
the further fact that in general each remedy was ad- 
ministered by itself — there was little or no "shot-gun" 
practice. 1 Decoctions were the ordinary means to the 
application of remedies ; and root, bark or leaf was more 
commonly utilized than seed or blossom. 2 
1— Erd. 235. 2— Handb. 837. 




43 



V 



Of Rational Agencies Other 
Than Medicines 

ESIDE his medicines, the Red practitioner 
very commonly made use of massage, hot ap- 
plications and perspiration artificially in- 
duced. For the last, among the Pima, the 
person ailing is merely bundled in blankets. The 
Mescaleros have a more elaborate method, seating 
the patient, well covered, over a hole packed in the 
ground, wherein water has been heated with hot stones. 
Sudorifics are also used. 1 Among the Pima and the 
Maricopa, for pains in the stomach and the like, warm 
earth or ashes, in a cloth, is frequently applied: and 
such was perhaps the simple character of the "hot appli- 
cations" for "affections of the spleen and the stomach,'' 
of which Col. Jones speaks, among the Southern tribes. 2 
Massage in the Southwest is sometimes employed for 
days together. 3 

For vesication the Otomi, of Mexico, use a caustic 
plant ; and the Pani had similar means. 4 The Chocta 
blistered with "burning punk," 5 and both Pima and 
Maricopa counter-irritate by burning upon the painful 
spot little "cottony balls" found on the lycium vine. 0 
Vesication is practiced even by the rude Tinne of the 
Xorth, and in Guiana the natives use for this purpose a 
stinging ant, — recalling the Spanish-fly of civilized 
practice. 

Scarification, for "sharp and persistent localized 
pain," was everywhere applied, with or without cup- 
ping, — the latter either by direct suction with the lips 

1— Erd. 246, 236, 253. 2— Antiq. 33. 3— Erd. 248. 4— 
Clark, 252. 5— Cush. 367. 6— Erd. 246. 




44 



OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES 



or with an instrument in the nature of a tube. 1 In nose 
bleed, — of infrequent occurrence, — the Apache apply 
cold water freely and sometimes tamp the nostrils. The 
same people, using "decoctions," contrive by means of 
a hollow reed, an enema, for pain in the bowels. 2 
- Lantau and other early French observers were 
astonished to find that the Hurons and their northern 
neighbors had recourse to bleeding, not as a panacea, 
after the practice prevalent then and later in Europe, 
but only for "local congestion." 3 So the Maricopa, fol- 
lowing Erdlicka, "employ blood-letting in persistent 
pain" or paralysis of a limb ; and Heckewelder mentions 
it merely as a concomitant of the sweatbath, in certain 
"rheumatic affections." 4 

The sweatbath held a very important place in primi- 
tive American life, being used — from l^orth to South, 
from East to West — for rest and pleasure, for cleanli- 
ness, for religious purification, for divination, for 
health and the treatment of disease. Variously con- 
structed, the bathhouses were an adjunct of every vil- 
lage, and by their vestige may yet be traced the site of 
camps as the course of trails. 5 In the Susquehanna 
region I have noted, even at this late day, clear mark 
of some hundreds. 

Among the Narraganset and their neighbors, the 
pesuponch or "hot-house" was commonly built in a hill- 
side, by a stream, and was large enough to accommodate 
ten to twenty persons at once. A "cell," Williams calls 
it. 6 In this "the men enter after they have exceedingly 
heated it with a store of wood laid upon an heape of 
stone in the middle." Sitting "round the hot stones 
an houre or more," on coming "forth they runne, sum- 
mer and winter, into the brooke to cool them" — and 
this "without the least hurt," a matter of "admiration." 

Heckewelder' s description of the bathhouse in use 
among the Lenape some two centuries later, 7 agrees 

1— Handb. 836; Clark, 252; Section VII. 2— Erd. 233, 
234, 237. 3— Lloyd, League II., 285. 4— Heck. 225. 5— Wilke- 
son, N. Y. Times; Clark 365, 382. 6— Key 158. 7— Heck. 225. 

45 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



pretty closely with that of Williams. It was built "on 
a bank or slope, one-half within and the other above 
ground." There was a door — "in front. 1 ' The "oven" 
was not so large, holding but "two to six persons at a 
time." The stones were heated outside. Men were ap- 
pointed for this purpose, and everything in readiness 
the fact was announced in the village by a crier. "As 
soon as a sufficient number had come to the oven," sev- 
eral of the stones were rolled "into the middle of it" 
and the bathers entered. From time to time water was 
"poured on the hot stones" in the oven, producing steam. 
When perspiration ceased, the bathers came out, and 
the stones renewed, a second party entered. Thus until 
all had been served. 

Our authority states that in general the ovens were 
at some distance from the village, where was plenty of 
"wood and water." Proximity to water seems to imply 
the cold plunge — which, for the rest, in most accounts 
is mentioned. The women had separate baths, situated 
modestly in a quarter other than that appropriated to 
the men. Once or twice a week, commonly, the men 
bathed; the women, not so much exposed nor fatigued, 
hardly so often. 

The bathhouse described by DeYries, for the natives 
about New Amsterdam (New York), appears to have 
been built, not in a hillside, but anywhere by a "running 
brook." It was made tight by covering with clay the 
framework of branches. The hut was for "three or 
four" at once, and the stones, when the heat was suffi- 
cient, were removed. DeYries mentions the plunge. 1 
Montanus, writing for New Netherland generally, and 
who probably had never seen the account of Williams, 
says the baths were "made of earth" and that there was 
"a small door." "Whenever the patient has sweated a 
certain time, he immerses himself suddenly in cold 
water; from which he derives great security against all 
sorts of sickness." 2 

1— Narr. 117. 2— Doc. Hist. IV., 128. 

46 



OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES 



For the Mohawk, we have the words: ennejonskira, 
sweathouse; ennejontenni, to bathe together — the sen- 
tence: Sneiontha acj-ennejon. heat the stones that I may 
bathe. 1 All these are readily comprehensible in the 
light of the paragraphs foregoing, and sufficiently at- 
test corresponding customs. 

The radical in the words cited is ennejon, quite other 
than twatewasothon which Bruyas defines as "to enter 
into the sweathouse to know the past, present and 
future," i. e., for divinatory purposes. The conjuror's 
hut seen among the Iroquois by John Bartram, 1743, he 
describes as a little "cage" — made by setting poles in 
a ring perhaps five feet across, bending the tops together 
and covering with blankets. "They differ from their 
sweating coops in that they are often far from water, 
and have a stake by the cage. Yet both have a heap of 
red-hot stones put in." 2 

If the ennejonskwa differed from the diviner's hut 
only by proximity to water and absence of the stake, it 
seems clear that in general the Iroquois used — in the 
later time, at least — a bathhouse resembling that still 
to be seen on the Crow reservation, Wyoming, and such 
as described by Clark for the Plains and yet common 
throughout the Southwest: a wicky-up or framework 
of branches covered with blankets. 3 

"Far more substantial was the anulea, of the Chocta, 
— "an important adjunct in all villages," — built in 
Cushman's day of logs chinked with clay, and heated 
by a fire, which was raked out when the desired tempera- 
ture had been attained. 4 

The Western sweathouses are heated with stones, as 
were those of the East. These are fired in the open and 
placed inside as needed. Clark, speaking more particu- 
larly of the Cheyenne, says the hot stones were "care- 
fully piled" in a hole made in the center of the wicky- 
up. The hut removed, there remained a heap of 
stones "about a foot above the surface of the ground." 

1— Br. 108. 2— Obs. qu. Beau. Wd. 194. 3— Clark, 364-68; 
Erd. 16, 32. 4— Cush. 259. 

47 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



Several authorities — Dunbar, Erdlicka, McLaugh- 
lin — note that, in the West, the bathers having entered 
the hut, a dish of water was passed in to be used in 
making steam. Others, as Oushman and Clark, men- 
tion the plunge. 

Erdlicka remarks that the sweathouse is often "an 
adjunct to the dwelling" — though commonly built when 
needed. Dunbar says, that, in a Pani village, "several 
might at any time be seen in different directions." 1 
Clark speaks of them, in camps but of a day. 

For the stones used, though sometimes they are spoken 
of as "boulders," Heckewelder compares them in size to 
"a large turnip ;" Clark says, "about six inches in 
diameter." 

I have been minute in the description of this primi- 
tive Turkish bath, because the particulars given seem 
satisfactorily to account for one of the most notable 
marks of Red occupation yet to be found in the Susque- 
hanna valley — the so-called "nrebeds," consisting of 
ordinary coblestones six inches through or thereabout, 
packed in beds commonly three feet or so in diameter. 
They are nearly always by a stream, and several are 
sometimes grouped irregularly within a small area or 
strung along a shore. 

Such stones or beds of stone are often spoken of as 
marking lodge^sites. But there is nothing in the data 
of Indian house construction ro show that the fireplace 
was ever paved. 'No more can they be regarded as out- 
side "cooking places" nor "places for firing pottery" — 
since they seldom furnish miscellaneous relics and con- 
tain but little charcoal. If, however, we conceive them 
as stones piled in, or on, what was once a sweathouse 
floor, all is fairly explicable — as the further fact that 
on a "firebed" at East Branch was found a broken pot. 

Figure 1, photographed from a bed washed out two 
or three years since on the Adequentaga site, Oneonta, 

1— See Clark 365. 

48 



OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES 



• — at the mouth of the Charlotte, — illustrates very well 
their appearance when undisturbed. Commonly they 
have been plowed out, where noted, and the stones are 
considerably scattered. The bed figured was on the 
edge of a spring brook, forming pools nearby. 




Fig. I. 



Wrote Heckewelder: "The sweathouse is the place to 
which the wearied traveler, hunter or warrior looks for 
relief from the fatigues he has endured, the cold he 
has caught, or the restoration of lost appetite." When- 
ever and however indisposed, the Lenape had recourse 
to it and commonly with good results. "Lewis and Clark 
thought it efficacious in rheumatism. Cushman testi- 
fies that in "common intermittent fever" the anuka 
seldom failed to effect a cure. A resident of Detroit, 
long in general ill health, who as a last resort took the 
sweatbath at the Moravian Indian village on the Clin- 
ton river, Michigan, in 1784, seemed at first much the 
Avorse for his radical experiment ; but shortly began to 
mend, and came finally to complete recovery. When 
Heckewelder, some fifteen years later, again met him, 
he told the missionary that in all the interval he had 
experienced not "the least indisposition" — a fact which 



49 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



he attributed entirely to the sweatbath. There are 
plenty of similar experiences in the books ; and I think 
it may fairly be maintained that the sweatbath had con- 
siderable remedial value. 

The Utes of Colorado were wont in old time to resort 
much to the thermal springs of the Middle Park, for 
the cure of rheumatism by bathing. The right of the 
Shoshone to certain thermal baths in the Red canyon, 
Wyoming, was carefully reserved in a recent treaty — 
to be used "as by their forefathers," Among the Apache, 
persons very ill often lie for hours in the sun ; and the 
same practice, "in the hope that it may help," has been 
noted among the Iluichol of Mexico. The reader will 
here recall the latest dictum of science, that even cholera 
germs quickly perish when exposed to "bright sunlight/ 

Notable in the history of civilized medicine is the dis- 
covery of vaccination — by Jenner, in the early nine- 
teenth century. But more remarkable, it will be ad- 
mitted, — relative culture considered, — is the old-time 
practice by the South African Kafirs of inoculation 
against the cattle disease known as charbon or anthrax. 
For this the Kafirs, taking the lungs of an animal dead 
with the ailment, cook them moderately for some time 
"in a copper vessel." In the decoction is dipped a 
string, which, drawn just beneath the skin in the tail 
of the beast to be treated, is secured with a stitch. A 
moderate inflammation follows, and sometimes the par- 
tial loss of the tail ; but in general there is speedy re- 
covery, and the animal is thereafter commonly immune. 
In this operation the essential, it would appear, is the 
cooking process, by which the virus introduced has been 
attenuated. 

I cite this indubitable instance of primitive ingenuity 
and intelligence that the reader may receive with less 
incredulity, the statement that the Indians of Guiana 
practice a sort of inoculation against both yellow fever 
and serpent bite. Other than that subcutaneous injec- 



50 



OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES 



lions are used in each case, nothing is known of means 
or process, secrecy having by the primitive practitioner 
been carefully maintained. Bnt the efficacy of the 
treatment is avouched by travelers of credit, and its 
reality, so far at least as relates to serpent poison, can 
hardly be doubted. 

Among the old Canadian tribes Lafitau saw flint in- 
struments used in minor amputations. 1 Bones were 
set, — and often well set, — fractures and dislocations 
were reduced, among all tribes. 2 Indeed, civilization 
can still show men quite equal to all such operations, 
who have no training in tlie schools. 

The splint, the suture, cautery are mentioned by all 
authorities. The Maricopa and the Navaho open ab- 
scesses. 3 The Tarahumare perform castration with suc- 
cess. 4 The Mesealeros do not hesitate to remove a 
"membrane," which sometimes forms on the eye. In 
this operation they use a keen spawl of glass, a substi- 
tute for old-time flint or obsidian. 5 

Dr. Beaman, a physician of New Brunswick, relates 
that when at Moose Factory, Hudson Bay, in 1903, he 
saw an Eskimo, who having in some manner lost his 
forearm, had equipped himself in its stead with a 
wrought bone terminating in a hook. Cleverly ad- 
justed to the muscles of the upper arm, by means of 
straps, the artificial limb was very serviceable. 

Though dental caries among Indians is still rare, 0 
teeth were readily removed in the old time, need aris- 
ing, though the agency of a sinew and a firm hand.' 
Among the ancient Mexicans, — Maya and Zapotec, — 
Avas a close approach to modern dental methods, incisors 
having been found at Palenque and Mitla in which for 
some reason bits of mineral had been set. The excava- 
tions, well made, are supposed to have been formed with 
tools of copper, tempered hard by a process now un- 
known. Similar tools were employed perhaps in the 

1— Lloyd, League II., 258. 2— e. g. Clark 252. 3— Erd. 
240, 248. 4— lb. 251. 5— lb. 237. 6— lb. 191. 7— lb. 234, 237. 

51 



MEDICINE IX THE FOREST 



primitive operation of trepanning, the purpose of which 
is not well established, though its existence is clearly 
traceable from Pern to Northern Mexico. 

Tn the Red world the obstetrician, if a figure not so 
familiar as in civilization, was still well known and 
there was good practical knowledge of the art. "It hath 
pleased God," wrote Roger Williams, "in wonderful 
manner to moderate 1 that curse of the sorrowe of child- 
bearing to these poore women. Yet Erdlicka is of 
opinion, from observation among contemporary South- 
western tribes, that the moderation of the primal curse 
by Williams noted, and after him by many, consists 
mainly in better resistance — -due to superior build, 
health and patience, coupled with normality of offspring. 
Delivery is often extremely 'easy, but dystocia is by no 
means unknown and the need of assistance. 1 

The latter, seldom requisite to the degree common in 
civilization, consists ordinarily in careful kneading and 
pressure with occasional internal manipulation. Steam- 
ing the lower part of the body is a frequent resource, 
and decoctions of various herbs, as juniper and yerba 
buena, are often administered. - Profuse hemorrhage is 
sometimes treated, and with success, by stretching the 
patient face downward on warm earth; and methods, 
simple but ingenious, which need not here be particu- 
larized, are used for protracted labor and retention — 
both exceptional. Abnormal presentation is rare. 

In general the patient is kept up and about while 
possible,^ and first-mothers receive special attention. 
Commonly the patient rises on the second day, not sel- 
dom the first. Henry tells of an Ojibwa woman, who, 
confined and "very ill" one day, on the next, "in high 
spirits, assisted in loading the canoe, barefooted and 
knee deep in water." Passages of like import are num- 
erous in early narratives ; but let it be noted, that, for 
the Southwest, a regimen after confinement is the rule. 2 
1— Brd. 55. 2— Erd. 55, 56, 57, 59, 61 note, 62, 63. 



OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES 



Severance and ligature, among contemporary tribes, 
are about as in civilization. The Jicarilla Apache per- 
mit nursing only after two days. Occasionally the milk 
is scanty or delayed, when recourse is had to another 
mother or to the milk of a goat or a, cow.* Elizabeth 
Hanson, captive among Canadian Algonquians, 1724, 
when unable to nurse her child was advised to beat the 
kernels of hickory nuts in a little water, add fine corn- 
meal, and boil the mixture. On this the babe soon ^be- 
gan to thrive and look well." She observes that "with 
this kind of diet the Indians did often nurse their in- 
fants." 2 

Several instances are recorded for the Eastern tribes, 
where White women taken captive when about to be- 
come mothers, were provided, even on the trail, with 
little huts for the confm$nent. 3V Such a separate lodge, 
among the Ojibwa/is mentioned by Henry and seems 
to be implied in many accounts. Equally creditable to 
Red modesty — with which the reader may contrast, for 
example, the old French law of public royal accouche- 
ment — is the fact that among most tribes the whole 
matter of obstetrics was in general left to michvives, 
men being called only in great emergency. 4 

In the cure of sores and wounds, the success of the 
forest practitioner was remarked from very early time. 
To Henry among the Ojibwa, as to Heckewelder later 
among the Lenape, and to Clark later still among the 
Pani — results were nothing short of "astonishing." We 
read of many a White on the Border to whom life was 
saved by this primitive skill — as Burwell, among the 
Seneca, 1782; Smith of St. Johnsville, among the 
Canadian Iroquois, at about the same date — notably, 
Eleazar Williams, "the lost dauphin," Avhen living with 
the Iroquois of Caughnawaga during the war of 1812. 5 

Lloyd, citing Lafitau, says treatment consisted 

1— Erd. 74, 7G. 2— Captiv. 121. 3— Ind. Narr. 147; Heck. 
340. 4— dish. 232; Clark 279; Erd. 58. 5— VanCamp. 254; 
Sms. Fr. IT., 150; Bloomf. 1G7. 

53 



/ 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



"simply in keeping the wound clean and sheltering it 
from the air/' A French traveler of experience insists 
that mere water is "the most valuable of therapeutic 
agents." But in Burwell's case "suitable" herbs were 
also employed, a "strong decoction" being made, in 
which a fcuther was dipped and repeatedly drawn 
through the wound. So, too, for the cure of the Dau- 
phin, there was recourse to "well-known herbs." 

John Gyles, captive to the Algouquians of the St. 
John river, 1689, was healed of very dangerous sores 
resulting from frostbite, by the application of fir balsam 
burned to a salve. 1 Among the Ohoeta, sores were 
treated "with the resin of the copal-tree ;" and with the 
Zuni pinon gum is much in favor for the like purpose. 2 
Erdlicka speaks of various "lotions, powders and gums, 
which serve more or less as cleansing agents." 3 On the 
St. John "red ochre" was sometimes applied to wounds, 
and Gyles thought it efficacious. The Maricopa thus 
employ "fine dry earth." 4 

Cob John Smith, disabled by a "cane-stab" in the 
wilderness of Kentucky, in the summer of the year 1766, 
managed to extract the splinter by means of a bullet- 
mould, and then applied an "Indian medicine," which 
he had learned probably during his captivity among the 
Caughnawaga. This was the bark of the linden root, 
beaten upon a stone and well boiled. "With the ooze," 
lie writes, "I bathed my foot and leg. What remained 
I boiled to a jelly and made a poultice thereof/' For 
a bandage Smith used moss, wrapped round with elm 
bark. By this means, "simple as it may seem, the swell- 
ing and inflammation in great measure abated." 0 

Among the Choeta, Cushman saw the root of the "cot- 
ton-tree" (populus) used in poultice, on fresh wounds. 
Bleeding the Mescaleros arrest with spiderweb, or with 
scrapings from a tanned skin — this last a resource of 
the Border. 

X—Captiv. 88. 2— Cush. 228; Erd. 241. 3— Erd. 229. 4— 
lb. 248. 5— Captiv. 240. 

54 



OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES 



It were desirable that our scanty data on Red medi- 
cine were in all cases explicit as the passage from Smith. 
So might be prepared a very handy "First Aids'' for 
travelers in the wilderness. Thus among the Plains 
tribes a prompt and efficacious remedy for frostbite was 
to thrust the member into the paunch of a fresh-killed 
animal. 1 But just how the Iroquois cured the scurvy- 
smitten crew of Cartier, 1536, is left somewhat in 
doubt— though it was probably with mere hemlock tea. 

The Indians of Guiana are said promptly to alleviate 
the dangerous swellings caused by the sting of the huge 
wasp known as mouche-sans-raison, when these are m 
mouth or throat, by causing the sufferer to inhale the 
peculiar fumes produced in striking together two pieces 
of flint or quartz. But "the true snakeroot" so highly 
esteemed by the Indians of New Netherland "as an un- 
failing cure" for the sting of the rattlesnake, 2 cannot 
now be identified. That such a plant was known, is re- 
peatedly averred. 3 ^Natives of the Southwest use for this 
purpose, it is said, the gray-green leaves of the golorv- 
drina, a little creeping plant with tiny white blossom. 
These are beaten and applied in poultice, while from 
the whole plant is prepared a strong decoction, admin- 
istered in mighty draughts. 

It would be of interest and value to know the 'four 
different herbs," by mixing parts of which a woman of 
the Mescaleros could cure venereal troubles — the "six 
distinct" vegetal medicines which for the same purpose 
the White Mountain Apache used. 4 Contemporary ac- 
counts, however, are hardly less vague than the remark 
of Ash, — more than two centuries since, — that in such 
"distempers" the natives of the Carolinas were "ad- 
mirable." m 

The Brown man was very chary of imparting medical 
knowledge to the intruder. 5 Even when the secret was 

1— Clark 85. 2— Narr. 298. 3— Sms. Fr. I., 181; Cush. 
229, 3G8. 4— Erd. 232. 236. 5— Antiq. 34; Clark 252; Heck. 224. 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



thought to have been acquired, the answers had been 
often but to evade importunity or to play upon cred- 
ulity. 1 Moreover remedies were many times "strictly 
proprietary" — known only to an individual, or to a 
family of which no member survives. 

Says Erdlicka : "There is a prevalent belief that the 
Indians are acquainted with valuable specifics," though 
how far true "has not been shown." He thinks investi- 
gation "still feasible." But everywhere, as among the 
Opata, "native remedial treatment," like other primi- 
tive arts, must have greatly declined, through contact, 
direct or indirect, with civilization ; and in the East it is 
well-nigh lost. 2 

Doubtless the prime prophylactic in the Red world, 
used as such, was the fetish — of which in the following 
section. But the Southwestern tribes of to-day, in burn- 
ing or abandoning the dwelling of a person deceased, — 
not infrequently his property and everything he has 
touched during sickness, — certainly regard this as a 
measure of safety. The Zuni, with the dead, bury his 
blankets ; and the door of the house in which the death 
occurred having been left open for some days, before 
reoccupation the walls are whitewashed and the floors 
newly plastered with mud. 

Whether more or less recognized by the Eastern tribes, 
was the sanitary value of their custom of frequent vil- 
lage removal, — coupled often with destruction by fire of 
the houses abandoned, — does not appear. But, on the 
above data from the Southwest, such may well have 
been the case. Originally, however, there seems to have 
been no contagion in the East ; and the "sweet aire," 
so dear to Roger Williams, — the normal life in the open, 
left small need for sanitation. The dwellers in the 
forest did not hurry nor labor to exhaustion — occupa- 
tion was never injurious and often was beneficial. 3 Of 

1— Heck. 321-22. 2— Beauch. Na. 113; Cush. 497; Erd. 
249, 253; Handb. 83G. 3— Erd. 173. 



56 



OTHER RATIONAL AGENCIES 

the staple vegetable food, the wise old Founder of Khode 
Island remarks that u the Indian corne," were it 
"known and received in England/' had well saved 
"many thousand lives." 

We have seen, in briefly treating of obstetrics, that 
in the Southwest a regimen commonly follows confine- 
ment. Among the Pima and some others, it is a pre- 
liminary. The Papago prescribe diet for acute indi- 
gestion; the Yuma, in various complaints. 1 Bartram 
was of opinion that the Creeks and the Cherokee, in the 
general treatment of disease, placed regimen and absti- 
nence above medicine. 2 

l_Erd. 228, 242. 2— Antiq. 34. 




57 



VI 



Of Magic Healing and Healers 

N the Forest world, failing the ministrations of 
the Jiatetsiens, — by rational means snch as thus 
far described,— recourse was had to the atsinna- 

'ken. The latter word Bruyas translates by the 

French jongleur, juggler ; but the translation is no more 
admissible than were the rendition by "juggler" of the 
French word pvetre, a priest. For the atsinnaken was 
strictly a mediator between his people and the deity; 
that is, a religious personage. 1 

It was impossible, perhaps, for the French priest, 
our authority, to conceive of one exercising functions 
akin to his own, equipped with a rattle in lieu of a 
bible; yet the analogy, I trust, is not beyond the under- 
standing of the modern reader — to whom, if he be dis- 
posed to question the fact, I commend the passage in 
Colden wherein it is stated, on the indubitable witness 
of the Iroquois themselves, that Bruyas, coming to On- 
ondaga about the year 1699, did offer among other 
things to dwell with them and to "drive away," like any 
native shaman, "all sickness, plagues and diseases." 2 

Xor need we therefore tax the priest with bad faith 
or desire to deceive. At the recent Episcopal conven- 
tion in Cincinnati, a deputy stoutly averred that 
"modern medical science had its place, but that when its 
limits had been reached the limits of God's power had 
not been reached" — an opinion, wherein, by a large ma- 
jority the delegates concurred. 

The noble Hildegarde cured often by prayer; her 
patients profited by her singular piety. "At the first 
coming" of the Pilgrims, Sagamore John of the Wam- 
panoag was taken ill. Pastor Wilson, going to him, 

1— dish. 32; Erd. 250. 2— Colden I., 2G0. 



58 



MAGIC HEALING AND HEALEBS 



"fell to prayer" ; when soon after the Sachem "looked 
up" and "three days later went abroad on hunting." 1 
In Welsh's sketch of the Santee mission, 1869, one may 
read how a missionary and his native assistant on one 
occasion "knelt down and prayed" for a sick Sioux; and 
how, though then the woman "seemed near death, now 
to-day she is better, and all our people feel that God has 
notably answered our prayer." 2 

Speaking of the Plains Indians, Clark says they at- 
tempted the cure of disease, in many cases mainly by 
appeal to the "unknown." 3 LaHontan, writing m the 
early eighteenth century, tells ns, of the Iroquois, that 
they were wont to beseech the Great Spirit "to keep at a 
distance" the evil spirits of disease and pestilence. 4 Of 
the Narraganset Koger Williams notes that when ill 
they kept "open houses for all to come and helpe to pray 
with them." 5 "All priests," says Erdlicka, treating of 
Red medicine generally, "were believed to possess some 
healing power." 6 

Tecaurotane^a, the old Caughnawaga philosopher 
with whom Col. Smith passed a winter in the Ohio 
forest, 1757, being much troubled with rheumatism, 
purified himself and addressed a formal petition to the 
-Supreme Berncf that his knees and ankle might again 
"be right well." 7 When Henry was among the Ojibwa, 
a little child, falling into hot sap, was badly injured. 
Medicines were sedulously administered, coupled with 
feast and sacrifice to the ' a Master-of-Life," in "humble 
hope" that He would grant them efficacy. 8 

Among the Huichol, of Mexico, you may see high on 
rocks strange little "prayer sticks"— appealing mutely 
to the deities for cures. 9 Certain of the Apache and of 
the tribes of the Columbia valley are at this time using, 
in the old way, the prayers learned from the mission- 
aries for the cure of disease. "They believe/' we are 

1— Thatch. II., 15, 16. 2— Taopi xv., xvi. 3— Clark 248. 

4 _Morg. I., 155. 5— Key 140. 6— Handb. 838. 7— Captiv. 2..0. 
8— lb. 319. 9— Erd. 252. 

59 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



told, "that the sick can become well if only they place 
their faith in God.'' 1 

Even to the mystic healer diagnosis is desirable. We 
find the shaman, then, — that is, following various abor- 
iginal terms, the powaw, josakeed, atsinaken, — inquir- 
ing ordinarily for sins committed and particularly as 
to the violation of religions interdictions known as 
"tabus." 2 Impiety might have caused the disorder. 
More frequently, on due inquiry, it was imputed, as in 
New Testament time or as by Wesley, to evil spirits ; 
or to the spirits of men, animals and things inanimate ; 
or to indefinite supernatural agencies, as in case of the 
number Thirteen ; or to witchcraft. 

In such conceptions — varying from tribe to tribe and 
from time to time, and often so preponderant and spec- 
tacular of result as almost to conceal the rational prac- 
tice coexisting — lay the field of the conjuror or shaman, 
who, if true to his school, undertook to cure by prayer 
and song addressed to benevolent deities ; by command 
and menace directed against evil spirits ; by feast and 
sacrifice of either address ; and by incantations, manipu- 
lations and the like, for which perhaps he could have 
rendered reason no more definite than can our own 
healers in similar cases. 

We read of curative ceremonies combining many of 
these agencies, and lasting sometimes for days. Among 
the Chocta one such took the form of a dance, the tans- 
pichifa, accompanied by a feast, Among the Hurons 
the plumstone game might be ordered for a sick man, 
particularly if the patient had dreamed of it — the 
Powers revealing their will in dreams, and this game 
having a religious value. 3 

The shaman was "called" to the exercise of his 
functions. Among the Zuni, one struck by lightning, 
who recovers, is by this sign designated as possessing 

1— Erd. 225; Collier's Weekly, Sept., 1910. 2— Erd. 22G, 
243. 3— LaJeune vid. Lloyd, League II., 266; Morg. I., 233. 



00 



MAGIC HEALING AND HEALERS 

special power to deal with fracture. 1 The Maricopa 
coniuror, from early childhood, has visions that sum- 
mon to the high career. 2 Brainerd tells of a powaw, 
seen among the Lenape, who exercised his office by ^com- 
mand of a "Great Man" in a -world above. What 
is most of all astonishing," writes the missionary, _he 
imagines all this to have passed before he was born. He 
had never been, he says, in this world at that time. 

Called by dream to his sacred office,— by vision, 
ecstasy and' supernatural occurrence,— the shaman by 
the same means grew in wisdom; learning thus new 
sons-s, prayers, incantations— mystic remedies and pro- 
phylactics.' 4 -So was "given" the particular song that 
could propitiate the spirit of a slain animal; so was 
found the owl's feather, that, savantly applied, might 
countervail the summons of the dead. 0 

As their remedies were general or specific, so the 
shamans were specialists 0/ general practitioners; and 
their practice was available for the tribe, as for the in- 
dividual. 0 Everywhere there were shamanistic societies 
for healing. Such, among the Iroquois, was the famous 
Falsef ace society— which, as late as 1849, undertook 
the expulsion of cholera, among the Seneca.' One and 
all, they recall the religious communities which by 
reason of piety, enjoyed in western Europe, until a late 
date, great repute in medicine. Candidates for the 
Falsef ace society were summoned by dream. Among 
the Zuni, persons recovering from critical illness are 
eligible to similar orders. 

There were schools in shamanism — as fire healers ana 
snake healers. The power of the serpent in disease was 
very widely recognized. Brant, returning from the 
expedition 'to Harpersfield in the spring of 1780, is 
cured of fever by a "free use" of rattlesnake soup. 8 A 

i_Ercl 241 2— lb. 228. 3— Brain. 349, cf. Brd. 222. 4— 
Powell Uv.;" Clark 248. 5-Erd. 243, 244. 227. C-Ib. 222. 227 
24i. 7_Morg. I., 157-59. 8— Sms. His. 329. 



61 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



powder prepared from the flesh of the same reptile is 
used by the Papago to cure consumption. 1 Henry saw 
the blood of the garter-snake administered, like a tinct- 
ure, in difficult delivery. The patient experienced 
prompt relief, and Wawatam, his Ojibwa friend, as- 
sured him that the remedy was unfailing. 2 Among the 
Southern tribes, a snake skin was wrapped about the 
body in "lingering distempers." 3 

Que of the earliest accounts of shamanistic healing 
may be found in the so-called "Van Curler manuscript," 
relating what took place in a bark cabin of the village 
of Tionontogen, not far above present Fort Plain, in 
the then wilderness of the Mohawk valley, Sunday, Dec. 
24, 1634. A sick man had summoned two "simachkos," 
i. e. atsinnaken. Immediately on entering they began 
to sing ; they lighted a large fire ; each wrapped a snake- 
skin about his head. Having washed their hands and 
faces, they next placed the patient near the lire. Then 
a pot was filled with water, "medicine" was added, and 
dipping into the medicated Avater "a stick about half a 
yard long/' the healers several times swallowed this, 
apparently after the fashion familiar in modern jug- 
gling. Afterward "they spat on the patient's head and 
over all his body." Then followed "shouting, raving 
and slapping of the hands," with "many demonstrations 
on one thing and another/' till "their perspiration ran 
down on all sides." 

Of the effect produced by this weird treatment, 
nothing is said. The observer was probably Van den 
Bogaert, the Dutch surgeon then stationed at Port 
Orange ( Albany ) . 4 

Williams, concerning Xarraganset methods, makes 
the brief note that "in sickness the priest comes close 
to the sick person and performs many strange actions 
about him, and threatens and conjures out the sick- 
ness." 5 Pastor Wilson saw "many Indians gathered to- 

1— Erd. 242. 2— Captiv. 306. 3— Antiq. 35. 4— Narr. 138. 
146. 5— Key 112. 

62 



MAGIC HEALING AND HEALERS 



o-ether" about Sagamore John in his illness, -and some 
powaws among them, who are their priests, physitians 
and witches. They, by course, spoke earnestly to the 
sick sagamore and to the disease, in a way of charming 
it and him, and one to another in a kind of antiphoii- 
ies m Ordinary shamanistic procedure among the old 
Chocta, Cushman describes as consisting, in the mam, 
—the patient having been stretched upon a blanket,— 
in endeavoring to extract the cause or principle of the 
disease by suction. 2 _ t . 

Though entirely familiar with superficial appear- 
ances, Heekewelder, among the Lenape, seems never to 
have investigated the reasoning involved— saying merely 
that the conjuror was wont to approach the patient with 
a variety of contortions and gestures," and to perform 
-bv his' side and over him all the antic tricks'' that 
imagination could suggest. "He breathes on him blows 
in his mouth and squirts some medicine which he has 
prepared, in his face, mouth and nose. He rattles his 
o-ourd filled with drv beans or pebbles; pulls out and 
handles about a variety of sticks and bundles m winch 
he appears to be seeking the proper remedy,— all ol 
which is accompanied with the most horrid gesticulation, 
by which he endeavors, as he says, to frighten the spirit 
or the disorder away,— and continues in this manner 
until he is quite exhausted and out of breath, when he 
retires to await the issue." 3 

Dunbar, among the Pani, describes more particularly 
diagnostic procedure. Before inspecting the patient, 
who had been badly burned, two shamans called m, a 
pipe having been filled and brought to them, took from 
it a little of the tobacco and placed this carefully on the 
near-by hearth. Thereafter they smoked, puffing slowly 
to the four cardinal points and upward and downward. 
The ashes from the pipe were carefully emptied so as to 
cover the tobacco on the hearth— when, touching them 
1— Thatch. II., 15, 1G. 2— Cush. 259. 3— Heck. 232-3. 
63 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



with their finger tips, the operators one after the other 
passed their hands over the pipe, from bowl to end of 
stem. Examination of the patient followed, and treat- 
ment — the latter consisting of "intricate gesture," 
aspersion and suction, with the sprinkling of ashes from 
the pipe on the parts treated. Finally, a "dark powder" 
was applied. 1 

Erdlicka's statement of the "ordinary procedure" of 
the shaman, though based on observation in the South- 
west, serves to explain and supplement early Eastern 
accounts. The conjuror, he says, inquired first as to 
"symptoms, dreams and trangressions of tabus," and 
the nature of the ailment thus determined, "prayed, ex- 
horted or sang" — the last perhaps "to the accompani- 
ment of a rattle." Passes with the hand followed, "over 
the part affected," and suction commonly, the object of 
the latter being "to extract the immediate principle of 
the illness." Sometimes, by sleight of hand, the cause 
was actually produced — a thorn, a pebble, a hair. This 
was carefully destroyed. Afterward the shaman ad- 
ministered, say, a mysterious powder and left, perhaps, 
a protective fetish. 2 

Powell's explanation of the material cause sometimes 
brought to light, as above, in shamanistie treatment, is 
interesting and for certain cases no doubt correct, A 
shaman, after drawing the illness from a child, showed 
him a fossil (athyris.) The spirit of this had produced 
the trouble, he said, and before suction he had put the 
fossil in his mouth in order to return the spirit to its 
proper place. 3 

Fraternity procedure seems to have beeen much like 
that of the individual. At the old palisaded town of 
the Oneida, W atenratsannit , — near present Munnsville, 
Madison county, — Van den Bogaert, on a January day 
near three centuries since, witnessed what seems a primi- 
tive illustration — having gone with "a dozen men" to 
1— Clark 250. 2— Handb. 838. 3— Powell liii. cf. Starr 82-3. 



64 



MAGIC HEALING AND HEALERS 



"drive away the devil" from one "who was very sick. 
They were "mostly old men/' and had their faces 
painted red. Three wore wreaths of deer's hair, 
trimmed with "the roots of a sort of green herb"— lan- 
guage which suggests the ground-pine or other clubmoss. 
In the wreaths "stuck five white crosses." 

The floor of the house "was thickly covered" with 
hark, and "in the middle 1 ' the patient was placed. "Close 
bv sat an old woman" with a turtle-shell rattle, m winch 
were "many beads: 1 "She kept clinking all the while 
and all of them sang to the measure ; then they would 
proceed to catch the devil and trample him to death. 11 
The hark was trampled to atoms. After a time, one 
-went to the sick man and took away an otter that he 
had in his hands"— a fetish apparently, perhaps, like 
the weasel-fetish, to make the disease come out more 
easily. Extraction followed, by suction— "in the neck 
and on the back, 11 — when the operator, having "spat m 
the otter's month, 11 ran off kk like mad. 11 Certain of his 
companions did the like; and finally ashes and coals 
were wildly thrown about. 

We have here the equivalent, perhaps the original, ol 
the Falseface society {Hatigonsa) of the later Iroquois. 
If there were no masks, as now obtain, representing the 
spirits involved— it is to be remarked that masks are 
supposed to have been of rather late introduction. 

The Hatigonsa still make much of ashes in their 
• functions. 1 'At the Xew Year festival they hold a pub- 
lic "dance,' 1 when the sick are healed. Medical guilds 
in most tribes had such public exercises— says Dunbar: 
"to reassure themselves and awe the people.' 12 Erdlic- 
ka speaks of great "life-giving" ceremonies, lasting for 
days. Sometimes a tribal "medicine" was on this wise 
prepared. 3 

The gentle Heckewelder was greatly disturbed by the 
terrific appearance of a shaman seen by him in a Musk- 
1— Beaueh. Wd. 188. 2— Clark 250. 3— Handb. 837-38. 
65 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 

iiignm village. The dealer in magic resembled a huge 
bear "walking on his hind legs, and with horns on his 
head.' 11 A century earlier Capt. John Smith had writ- 
ten of a conjuror, among the Powhattan, who was "dis- 
guised with a great skinne, his head hung round with 

little skimies 

0 f weasc Is, 
and other ver- 
mine, with a 
cronnet o f 
feathers o n 
his head" and 
"painted ug- 

1 v a s 1 h e 
divell." 2 Tat- 
lin has left 
us a picture, 
Figure 2 — of 
a 1 Blackfoot 
shaman, as 
seen by the 
traveler but 
some sixty 
years since. 
The "great 
skinne 1 ' i n 
this instance 
is that of 

Fig. 2. a "y e 1 1 o w 

bear, 1 ' and the reader will observe horns, as well as 
various "little skinnes" such as long before mentioned 
by Smith, in Virginia. The lance is explained, per- 
haps, by a statement of Starr's — saying that in the 
Northwest the shaman sometimes carried a " spirit- 
pole," wherewith to give battle to the evil powers. 3 

One of the best descriptions of the shaman dress is 
l_Heck. 234. 2— News from Virginia. 3— Starr 82. 




66 



MAGIC HEALING AND HEALERS 



that of David Brainerd, who somewhere near Shamokm, 
on the lower Susquehanna, met in the year 174o, a 
coninror whose "pontifical garb" consisted, heside the 
-coat of bearskin,— dressed with the hair on and hang- 
ing down to his toes,' 1 — of a 
"pair of bearskin stockings and 
a great wooden face, painted the 
one- half black and the other 
tawny, and with an extravagant 
mouth cut very much awry,—- 
the face fastened to a bearskin 
cap drawn over the head." 

The priest carried a rattle, 
made of "a dry tortoise shell 

with some corn in it." As he 

came forward, "he beat his tunc 

with his rattle ( Figure 3), and 

danced with all his might; but 

did not suffer any part of his 

body, not so much as his fingers, 

to be seen." The missionary 

was much impressed. 'T could 

not but shrink away from him, 

although it was the noonday 

and I knew who it was — his ap- 
pearance and gestures were so 

frightful;' 1 

-Won't his patient be fright- 
ened to death on seeing him 

enter the house V — was the 

question put by Heckewelder to 
his Delaware friend Gelele- 
meiid, after encounter with the shaman m the .Musk- 
ingum village. -Xo; indeed, no. It is the disorder 
the evil spirit, that will be frightened away. And 
upon this theory, members of healing societies were 

1— Brain. 237. 

67 




Fig. 3. 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



equipped in much the same fashion as already described. 
Though in later days Morgan, for the Talsefaces, speaks 
merely of a mask (Figure 4) and "a tattered blanket" 
— adding that e a c h 
"carried a turtle-shell 
rattle" 1 — Lamberville 
at Onondaga, 1676, wit- 
nessed a "masquerade" 
of people "dressed like 
bears." 

We have the testi- 
mony of Roger Wil- 
liams that the Narra- 
ga nset con j urors di d 
sometimes "most cer- 
tainly worke great 
cures." 2 No less than 
"marvelous" were re- 
sults in some cases to a 
scientific observer such 
as Erdlicka. 3 The ex- 
cellent old New Eng- 
lander could explain 
these effects but by the "helpe of the divell." But 
modern psychology offers other explanation — the con- 
temporary student remarking that the "whole treat- 
ment, especially when practiced with sincerity, is strong- 
ly suggestive and impressive," exercising deep influence 
on the mind of the patient. 4 

As to good faith, we read that "the Indian medicine- 
men of to-day are chiefly of advanced years, shrewd and 
knowing," and that "many are undoubtedly sincere in 
all they do" — among such, "most impressive figures." 5 
That there are many charlatans also, the civilized prac- 
titioner, if no other, will fully understand; as the 

l_Morg. i. } 159. 2— Key 158. 3— Erd. 225. 4— lb. 222. 
5— lb. 223. 




6b 



MAGIC HEALING AND HEALERS 

further statement that their efforts failing, such fakirs 
-par hcularly m ease of younger persons who die-are 
wont to suggest a witch or wizard, "the designation of 

£££ " the culprit frequently p Iaci ^ his ^ - 

This last diversion might very well have proved suc- 
cessful with our Puritan ancestry. In the Red world it 
seems to have been most useful in the West-Heckewel- 
cter tor the Lenape, remarking merely that the jugglers 
failing, would declare the patient incurable; whether be- 
cause he had "applied too late," or had "no exactly fol- 
lowed their prescription," or finally was under the 
power of "one of the greatest masters of the science " 
whom they could not defeat.-" The first of these excuTes, 
at least, has a familiar sound. 

Almost any object which in primitive thought can 
"Li"" supernatural, may become a 

letish. In the Southwest are specified "peculiarly 
gaped stones or wooden objects, lightning-riven wood 
fea hers, claws hair, figurines of mythic animals, renre- 

n oTfX 6 ° f % htai ^-" 3 But, 'as wffi 

more fully appear m the memoir on religion, the Brown 
man had countless others. 

Many of these in use against disease, whether for 

CfaThe^ Yb" 8 ;,""!, 1 ViW ' n > tLe fo «- of our 
forefathers. Thus the red streamers which the Cree of 
Oan ada tl to wi11qw wan(J 

J^^plagne at bay," at once suggest the 'anSt 

"Rowan tree or red thread 
Put the witches to their speed " 
. As one reads of the fossil bones which a generation 
since were good medical material to the Panfihe. forth 
with remembers the "elfstones" in use in eighteenth 

SS for , aiIments im p« ted to s 

tames —the elfstone being a prehistoric arrowhead * 
2 ^ HeCl; ' 233 ' "-Himdh 836. 4-Clar k 
69 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



There was doubt 
as to the good 
faith of the X a 
vaho shaman who 
averred that a lit- 
tle of the carved 
sandstone F i g- 
nre 5, properly 
admi nis tered, 
"would cure al- 
most any dis- 
ease'' 1 ; but un- 
questionable is it 
that nephrite is 
Fig. 5. thus named be- 

cause formerly worn to prevent kidney troubles, just as 
still the horse chestnut is sometimes carried to prevent 
rheumatism. Even the lizards which the Tarahumare 
cut open and bind upon a fracture, have their parallel 
in the spiders boxed up, in parts of contemporary Eng- 
land, for the cure of ague — the disease disappearing as 
the spider dies. 

Among the Xarraganset magic influence was imputed 
to the black fox and the black wolf. 2 In a case of pneu- 
monia occurring some twenty years since in Central New 
York, the patient being desperately ill, some anxious 
neighbors taking counsel together in the absence of the 
doctor, proceeded to stretch across the breast of the 
sufferer the yet warm body of a black cat which they had 
killed and cut open. The therapeutic action of this 
strange remedy was not explained, as I remember, but 
its efficacy had been fully vouched for. I may add 
that the sick man recovered — in the belief of the dis- 
gusted physician, because of his medicines. But equally 
confident were the followers of the black cat, that to their 
intervention the patient owed his life. 

Among the Opata of Mexico, who at this day are 
1— Erd. 239. 2— Key 95, 143. 

70 




MAGIC HEALING AND HEALERS 



largely Catholic, "religious amulets" fill the place of 
the old-time fetishes in curing. 1 Comparable is an inci- 
dent of the DeSoto expedition, 1543, it being recorded 
that a native guide having fallen senseless, a passage 
from the Bible was read "over his body," when "he im- 
mediately recovered." 2 Similarly, an infusion prepared 
by soaking in water a text from the Koran, is a familiar 
panacea in all the Mohammedan world. 

Our old time fetishism appears notably in the long 
list of plant and tree charms— the analogue in the Eed 
world being, for example, the Apache practice of plac- 
ing plants of a spiny cactus, the cholU, at some few 
paces from their dwellings,— north, south, east and 
wes1% — i n order to fend off any contagion. 

"Trefoil, vervain, Johnswort, dill — 
Hinder witches of their will." 
Clubmoss, says a recent writer in the Westminster 
Eeview, 3 "was considered in former days a sure remedy 
for all 'diseases of the eyes." But to be efficacious it 
must be gathered "on the third day of the moon, at sun- 
down," and be cut kneeling, the person gathering having 
first carefully washed his hands. Gerarde believed that 
the willow-herb had something of power against ser- 
pents ; of the leaves of the ash, he wrote confidently that 
they were "of so great a vertue . . . that the ser- 
pents dare not be so bold as to touch the morning and 
evening shadowes of the tree." 

Robert the Pious, of France, was perhaps the first 
king whose magic touch could cure scrofula, In Andrew 
Boorde's "Breviary of Health," 1557, we read that the 
"kynge's majeste hath a great helpe," also, in "hallow- 
ing erampe rings." Cramp rings were worn against 
epilepsv. With such conceptions may be compared 
the case of a negro, living at Reading, Penn., who with- 
in a year has been frequently called upon to kiss the 
babies of certain of his white neighbors — the latter be- 
1— Erd. 249. 2— Captiv. 19. 3— July, 1910. 



71 



MEDICINE IN THE FOBEST 



lieving that their children will thus enjoy immunity 
from whooping cough. 

Signatory remedies, of which I have already spoken, 
pass easily into fetishes. Thus, whether the Hopi, who 
for baldness use a plant with "hair-like processes," 1 do 
this because of some supposed magical quality implied 
in the appearance of the plant, or merely because it 
suggests hair and must therefore be "good" for it — can- 
not well he determined. Quite as difficult to answer in 
terms, would be the question whether the ''snake-stones" 
employed the world over to cure the lute of a serpent, 
are a rational or a magical agency. Probably the con- 
ception varies. Where employed more or less rationally, 
they are supposed to act, on application to the wound, 
by absorbing the poison — adhering when first applied, 
falling off when "full." and readhering after careful 
washing until the poison is exhausted. In Mexico they 
are prepared by charring in copper a piece of staghorn. 

The "adder gem," believed in parts of England to 
cure the bite of the adder, is a perforated prehistoric 
relic in the nature of a bead or pendant, presumably of 
Druidic origin. In many countries are used for serpent 
bite, "bezoar stones" — a calculous concretion found now 
and then in the stomach of a ruminant. The deer fur- 
nishes the bezoar ; and we may be fairly certain both 
that the Brown man knew it and that he assigned to it 
due mauic value — perhaps as a serpent-stone. Indeed, 
the universal Mexican faith in the latter looks much 
like aboriginal survival. 

1— Handb. 837. 



72 



VII 



Of the Profession, the Care of the Sick, 
the Beginning of Medicine 

HEEE was eclecticism among the Forest practi- 
tioners — many combining with magic more 
or less of rational remedies and agencies In 

all practice fees were customary, and a round 

price was sometimes paid for a proprietary medicine. 1 
Of common knowledge everywhere were many vegetal 
specifics and simple manipulations. In the Southwest 
such are known "even to the older children" ; and we 
have Heckewelders statement that indispensable to 
every warrior, liable as he was to wounds or sickness 
when far from home, was some general acquaintance 
with "the healing properties of roots and plants." An 
Ojibwa known to Henry, Avhile alone on a trapping ex- 
pedition, fell across his ax, nearly severing hand from 
arm at the wrist. He ligatured the arm, cut away 
the hand, and gaining his solitary lodge, had cured him- 
self perfectly within a short time, "by the mere use of 
simples." 2 

The story reminds one of D'Artagnan, curing with 
marvelous promptitude the Avonnds got on his way to 
Paris — in the absence of any physician, and solely 
by means of a "miraculous" family balm. Dumas' 
picture is true to the time. Family medicines, their 
secret carefully guarded, held the place of the physician 
to a much later date in the history of France. 

In the Red community the shaman had as priest 
many other duties than those of healer — and most im- 
portant. He was respected and feared. His mystic 

l_Cush. 32; Heck. 231; Erd. 234, 235, 250; Handb. 838. 
2— Captiv. 309. 

73 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



learning commanded a higher fee than paid the hatet- 
siens. "In sick times," wrote Roger Williams, "the 
poore people spend both money [wampum] and goods 
on the powaws." 1 "Our doctors are the richest people 
among us," said Gelelemend to Heckewelder. "They 
have everything they want: fine horses to ride, fine 
clothes to wear ; plenty of strings and belts of wampum, 
and silver arm and breast plates in abundance." 2 

Let not the modern practioner be consumed with envy, 
however. The responsibility of the atsinnaken was far 
greater than his. The cases are many, particularly in 
the Southwest, where failing in several instances to 
effect a cure, the conjuror has been summarily dis- 
patched. Execution, let it noted, does not seem, how- 
ever, to have taken place so much in punishment of pro- 
fessional inefficiency, as because of the belief that the 
shaman "had turned wizard" and become a public 
danger. 8 

The prominence of woman in primitive medicine is a 
fact of much interest. It was "the squaws" who cured 
Smith of St. Johnsville, during his captivity in Canada. 
"Physicians of both sexes," writes Heckewelder. And 
Folsom, of the Chocta, says: "As many [physicians] of 
the female as of the male sex" — which he considers an 
"advantage." 4 

Some of the medicine-women encountered by Erdlic- 
ka "were shrewd and experienced" and their methods he 
pronounces "quite rational and effective." Most prac- 
ticed as midwives and herbalists, but some healed by 
magic, like the shaman, and were equally successful. 5 
One came of "a family of chiefs" — a circumstance that 
will serve to remind the reader of the Erankish women 
of high birth, who, in medieval time, were nearly all dis- 
tinguished for skill in plants and the healing of wounds. 

"In sickness they are very faithful to each other." 

!__ K ey 158-9. 2— Heck. 235. 3—Erd. 170, 224, 228. 4— 
Cush. 367. 5— Erd. 59, 224. 

74 



CARE OF TEE SICK 



So Montanus; and however sharply it may conflict 
with popular misconceptions, this early testimony is 
abundantly corroborated. Even among the Sioux, fresh 
from wild reprisal on the Minnesota border, the mis- 
sionaries found a ready way to confidence and esteem in 
"showing kindness to the sick" 1 ; and concerning the 
wandering Pani, so frequently taxed with neglect and 
abandonment of the ill and the aged, Clark, a very re- 
liable witness, after testifying to most "solicitous kind- 
ness" for those who were sick, 2 avers that abandonment, 
if ever chargeable, was "only of recent occurrence" — an 
incident, that is, of the corruption caused by whisky and 
the vices of the "superior race." 

We have already seen the Brown man building the 
first lying-in hospitals on the continent. Figure 6 shows 




Fig. 6. 

a hut such as certain present-day California tribes — the 
Yuma, the Walapai— prepare for the chronically ill. 
Once the usage may well have been widespread. 
1— Taopi. xvii. 2— Clark 254. 



75 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



Among the Manx of half a century since, the insane 
were kept like beasts in rough outhouses — without fire, 
whatever the weather ; in rags and with skins for a lair 
—while their relatives "slept warm." 1 When a boy, I 
repeatedly saw a man who was mildly insane, abused by 
the children in a country village — teased and even 
stoned. The Lenape were more humane. Says Heeke- 
welder: "The insane are always considered as objects 
of pity. ^ Everyone, young and old, feels compassion for 
their misfortune; to laugh or scoff at them would be 
considered as a crime, much more so to insult or molest 
them." Such was the sentiment and the practice of the 
tribes generally. 

Scanning these pages, perchance, a professional reader 
might remark that Red medicine was purely empirical. 
Let it be granted, and the stricture applies hardly less 
to onr own medicine — I will not say, in former times, 
but until within a period still recent. Yet it by no 
means follows that the one or the other was contempt- 
ible. 

Science is the ideal, but of prime importance is cure. 
If the Forest world could counteract snake-bite, it might 
very well dispense with knowledge, more or less certain, 
concerning the action whether of poison or antidote. 
Within the year it has been announced that rattlesnake 
venom, administered hypodermically, seems to cure or 
greatly assist in epilepsy. The remedy was suggested 
by the fact that a man subject for many years to epilep- 
tic attacks, having been bitten by a rattlesnake, on re- 
covering seemed to be free of the old disorder. While 
the wise are endeavoring to understand this, "venom 
treatment" goes on — apparently with good results. 
Should causa et ratio never appear, the remedy may re- 
main — cruder, no doubt, but still effective. 

The beginning of all science rests in accident and em- 
piricism. Thus the discovery of iodine was due to the 
1— Hall Came, "My Story" 18. 



BEGINNING OF MEDICINE 



old and persistent practice in the Valais, Switzerland, 
of administering to goitrous persons burnt sponge. Tins 
primary discovery seems to me quite as remarkable as 
that — of the chemist Coindet — to which it led. Let us 
cheerfully acknowledge the obligation of modern learn- 
ing to primitive perspicacity and ingenuity — of which, 
though they labor at enormous disadvantage, I am by 
no means able to detect the "inferiority." As for the 
Brown man, he had set foot and traveled some way on 
the road that leads to Knowledge — that which appears, 
not merely from facts herein cited, but from many 
others which I shall bring together in a memoir on Bed 
science. 

The word ofk'on Bruyas translates both as "demon" 
and "poison;" onnonkwatsera is both charm and medi- 
cine. 1 Such data suggest that in the history of medicine 
supernatural diagnosis and spirit practice come first — a 
knowledge of real remedies growing perhaps out of the 
use of plants as fetishes and signatories. Much, too, in 
medicine as in foods, must have been gained in pre-his- 
toric time through observation of the "mutes." There 
is East Indian tradition that the enema was suggested 
by certain habits of the ibis. 2 Galen held that blood- 
letting was originally learned from the hippopotamus, 
which, having a plethora of blood, according to the 
Greeks was wont to find relief by cutting itself now and 
then on some sharp rock, stopping the wound at the 
proper moment by rolling in the mud. 

So, along the old Border, you may yet hear the tradi- 
tion that the deer, inveterate foe of the rattlesnake, 
saved itself when bitten, in attack, by swallowing with 
all speed a certain forest plant. This had been diligent- 
ly sought but never well identified, though it was sup- 
posed to be the rattlesnake plantain — which passes 
again for an Indian remedy against serpent bite ; though 
as the leaf markings strongly suggest those of the rattle- 
1— Br. 36, 98, 81, 117. 2— Hatha Yoga 95. 

77 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



snake, it may well be but another illustration of the 
doctrine of signature. 

The numerous illustrations which in the course of this 
article I have drawn from Southern and Eastern sources 
as well as from the Iroquois, sufficiently establish the 
general application of the data contained to the ancient 
dwellers in the Susquehanna land, whatsoever their 
stock. Bruyas, aside from words and phrases already 




Fig. 7. 

quoted, supplies much evidence to the uniformity of the ^ 
Red world in its medicine as in other subjects of m- ' 
quirv. 

Thus we find: atatranre, it is forbidden; ongicatia- 
wenre, we dare not for fear of misfortune — which, with 
the word asonnionlcon , having the same meaning as 
ataivanre, indicate the tabu. We have astaiuen, defined 
as the "tortoise [rattle] which the juggler holds m his 
hands while singing;" garenda. translated "prayer, song, 
charm;" atrennonnianni, to cast spells; atonriaron, to 
sprinkle with medicine, derived apparently from onria, 

78 



breath, and indicating 
that the medicine was 
blown over the patient ; 
garendhetken wdhorio, 
an evil spell has killed 
him — with many other 
words and locutions 
equally significant as to 
magic healing. 1 

Quite as well indi- 
cated are rational meth- 
ods: gagentoramd, to 
put on a plaster: han- 
notsiotagwan, to draw a 
tooth ; kannentsarogon, 
to bleed in the arm: 
qarennhon, to scarify: 
gasicannet, to bundle 
up: twastigaton, to 
cause to vomit ; sagotsi- 
entannion jegaiontes, he 
cures all the sick; aonsa- 
tontonon gaiomiegiren 
onnanhwat, she had 
been cured, had she 
taken medicine. 2 

But the reader will 
have tired of linguistic 
evidence on the ways of 
the BroAvn man in medi- 
cine. More interesting, 
and still in some meas- 
ure available, is that af- 
forded by artifacts. 

Of the sweating- 
stones, by far more 
numerous than any 
other relics which yet 
attest Red medical 
practice, I have spoken. 
88. 2— lb. 48, 83, 93, 88, 10, 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 



Tiny points such as shown in Figure 7 are thought to 
be lancets, such as used in scarification and blood-letting. 
That "a flint" was used, we have the testimony, for 
example, of Lawson. 1 A keen arrowpoiut might have 
served, no doubt ; but the objects shown seem expressly 
designed. All shown are from Oquaga; 2 but I have 
seen several, from various village sites and camps. 

Lancets may easily escape observation. Not so the 
shaman's tube or "pipe" — of which Figure 8 shows the 
best specimen yet brought to light in the region herein 
par ticula r ly con si der e d . 

Henry, among the Ojibwa, saw a shaman remove the 
disease from a child by suction through "a hollow 
bone." 3 Among the Haicla, of the Northwest coast, 
disease is sometimes diagnosed as due to the capture 
by a malign spirit of the sick man's soul. The priests, 
"by singing and charms," succeed in getting the sonl 
into "a carved hollow bone" and so returning it. 4 

The Pani, in bleeding, used a horn "prepared for the 
purpose," placing it over the spot scarified and applying 
suction. 5 Coreal, describing the cupping practiced by 
the conjuror among the Florida natives, 1669, says 
that it was done either with the mouth or a sort of 
^chalumeau" — which is a hollow reed or pipe. 0 Among 
peninsular California tribes is described a tube of "hard 
black stone," used in sucking or blowing away disease. 7 

Tobacco was a fetish. Its use by Pani shamans in a 
curative ceremony we have seen. SosehaAva, the Seneca 
reformer, who like all latter-day prophets sought to re- 
vive old usages, declared that tobacco "must always be 
used in administering medicines. " 8 Venegas observed 
that among the peninsular Calif ornians the stone tube 
was employed, not merely for extracting disease by suc- 
tion, but as a sacred pipe. 9 Perhaps the habit of smok- 
ing may be traced to this usage, in which case the earl- 

1 — Antiq. 31-2. 2 — Found by Earl Springstein. 3 — Captiv. 
307. 4— Starr. 83. 5— Clark 252. 6 — Antiq. 3G2. 7— Smith. 
Rept. 1864, 386. 8— Morg. I., 240. 9— Antiq. 363. 

80 



iest pipes, follow- 
ing the tube, 
would probably 
have been straight. 

The stone tube 
is readily avail- 
able, also, as a 
whistle. And there 
was much whist- 
ling in conjuration. 
Bean champ says 





Fig. 9. 

that on the Onon- 
daga reservation 
"long tubular bone 
or cane whistles" 
were employed 
in mystic cere- 
mony "even with- 



in 



a few vears. 



The Blackfoot 
shaman was wont 
to "fast an d 
dance to the sun, 
b 1 o w i n g his 
whistle." 2 

C o m m o n 1 y , 
whistles were 
made of reed or 
bone, no doubt — as 
above stated. But 
Figure 9 shows 
what seems to be a 
whistle of stone. 
It was found in 
the Butternut val- 

1— Beau. Pol. 53. 
2— Clark 72. 



Fig. 10. 

81 



BEGINNING OF MEDICINE 



ley, near Gilbertsville, and seems the only one yet re- 
corded. Whistles had other uses than in shaman prac- 
tice, of course — particularly in warfare. 



The fine sha- 
man tube Figure 
8, of steatite, ten 
and a half inches 
in 1 e n g t h — the 
hollow cut, not 
drilled — was taken 
from a grave on 
the eastern branch 
of the Delaware. 
Figure 10 shows a 
specimen, equally 
noteworthy, found 
at Oneonta. It is 
of soapstone, some- 
thing over four 
inches long, and 
drilled. The re- 
markable feature 
is the faint intagl- 
io, apparently of 
a snake — recalling 
the world-wide 
cult of the ser- 
pent, and particu- 
larly the "snake- 
skins" wrapped 
Fig. it. about their heads 

by the two- shamans at Tionontogen. 

Of a more common type is Figure 11 ? from near 
Oquaga — of slate and about as long as the tube Figure 




82 



MEDICINE IN THE FOREST 




10. Several of the sort 
have been here and 
there recovered, in 
whole or in part, along 
the upper Susquehanna. 
At Oneonta was found 
some two-thirds of a 
tube of the Palatine 
type, Figure 12, — such 
as occurring in the Mo- 
hawk valley. The same 
form appears below 
Tioga. 

In the shaman's out- 
fit were many things 
other than such as above 
described — feathers, 
claws, skins, heads, odd 
stones, natural or arti- 
ficial ; masks, sacred 
sticks, herbs. Few of 
these could, in their 
nature, now remain ; 
nor, if by strange 
chance preserved, could 
still be identified. The 
marvel is, the lapse of 
time considered, that 
aught is left to mark 
the rude beginnings of a 
beneficent science^ 
which for the humble 



Fig. 12. 



83 



APR 10 1911 



BEGINNING OF MEDICINE 



shaman's tube substitutes now, forsooth, the Institution 
for Research. 

"Immeasurable progress !" 

Beyond doubt. Yet it is always to be remembered 
that of the Institution the Brown man had small need. 
For the Superman, when It is mentioned — master of 
resources we can but faintly imagine, he perhaps will 
indulgently smile. 




S4 



